Last season was one to forget for the Iowa Hawkeyes. It feels like that’s been said about this team hundreds of times throughout the offseason. It didn’t have that aura about them going into the season, however. They were conducting the Iowa Hawkeyes hype train after outperforming expectations in a totally fun 2016-17 season which saw Peter Jok lead the league in scoring and the team finish at least .500 in conference play for the fifth straight year.
There was reason for hope and even a case to be made (hilariously incorrect in retrospect) for them to be better without the first team all-Big Ten player.