In honor of midnight madness kicking off across the country this very night, i think its time to give a small hawkeye b-ball preview. its supposed to be a rebuilding year for us this season because 2 or 3 of our starters are gonna be guys who have never played before, but look at the national champion florida gators last year, there had little to no hype because all their players were unproven and look at all the success they ended up having. i think we could be dangerous in the big ten and surprise a lot of people, everyone is counting us out but the rest of the conference is starting over as well, there is no clear-cut favorite. right now i guess the two main teams are wisconsin, who is returning the core of their squad, including prolific scorer alando tucker, and ohio state, who is creating massive hype with their star-studded recruiting class lead by 7-foot beast greg oden, but all of that could change pretty fast. our biggest strength will be the backcourt, where we have the most experience and returning, proven talent. adam haluska will have to carry most of the scoring load and improve his consistency, i expect him to do well and ascend into a leadership role. hes a great athlete, scorer, and when hes on from downtown hes pretty unstoppable. hes just more of a streaky shooter who disappears in key times, but its his senior year so he should get better at all that. mike henderson, our point guard, has quietly been one of our most valuable players the past few years. he will be one of our key players this season, and his improvement last year was very apparent. hes always been a tenacious defender whos known for embarassing opposing point guards by snatching the ball from their nose, and hes a solid playmaker and efficient at running the offense, but the biggest thing that nobody noticed was his offensive improvement. hes pretty quick and dangerous at getting to the basket and making something happen, and hes a really underrated three point shooter. he passed up a lot of attempts last season because we had jeff horner on the team, but now he should have more confidence taking those shots. tony freeman is our other backcourt star, very talented but probably wont start unless the hawks want to use an undersized lineup. freeman is more of a natural 2-guard because hes a great shooter from downtown and a dangerous scorer as well who puts these priorities ahead of playmaking, but he is quickly learning to improve and master the point guard position because he is only 6 feet tall. will be our key player in the near future, like perhaps next season. all the other starters will probably be frosh, one nice thing is that we had a surprisingly great recruiting class, steve alford has always been a bad recruiter whos missed out on such studs as kirk hinrich, kyle korver, and raef lafrentz, so this recruiting class was even more of a treat. one of the other nice things about this class is the athleticism and college-ready strength and game that they bring, the iowa program hasnt had great (or even good) athletes since the BJ Armstrong days and has always been more of a blue-collar program, so its a nice plus. the only other question mark i guess is the center position, either texas juco-transfer kurt looby or 7-foot incumbent seth gorney will start. looby will definitly be the better player and serious stud down the road, hes a great athlete with good size and skill, but hes really raw and more of a potential player, while gorney is big and tough but doesn't have much on the skill side and he looks like butt-head from beavis and butt-head. iowa is always a great defensive program, so thats nothing to worry about, and our backcourt should be one of the best in the big ten, but our season will hinge on the play of the young players, so we are either looking at an NIT appearance/miracle big-ten berth or else a horrible disaster. we could make another legendary big ten tourney run and make it like 3 years ago, and with florida last year im not worried and have faith and anticipation that we could have a surprise season, we always do pretty well when theres no hype on us and it will be interesting to see how this wide-open Big Ten season goes.