Iowa releases their non-conference schedule

[Da Coach]

Must be nice.
18 home games, only 2 non-conference road games, and they will be just a few miles away at Northern Iowa (last year's RPI 84) and Iowa State (RPI 135) where the Hawkeye fans will turn out in large numbers. They don't play a single non-conference road game outside of Iowa! And their only trip outside the state is their appearance in the South Padre Island Tournament.

http://www.hawkcentral.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070822/HAWKS0102/708220310/1053/HAWKS

Their 9 non-conference home games are against a pathetic group of teams that does not include a single team anywhere close to an RPI under triple digits last year.
They will play-- Idaho State (RPI 193), Northern Colorado (RPI 336), Florida Gulf Coast (new to Div I- their RPI will be 330+), Maryland Eastern Shore (332), Wake Forest (122), Drake (113), and Southeastern Louisiana (229).
They also have the Hawkeye Challenge which includes a "challenging" lineup of Louisiana-Monroe (203), Eastern Illinois (309), and Rice (15.
They do not have a single home non-con game against a team with an RPI less than Drake's 113.
If I was a season ticketholder, I'd probably ask for a partial refund. This home schedule is really poor. The only good thing about it is that it almost guarantees that Iowa will win 20 games their first season under Todd Lickliter.

Iowa's only non-conference trip outside of Iowa all year will be Nov. 23-24 when the Hawkeyes travel to the South Padre Invitational in Texas, where they will be forced to play a couple decent teams. They play Bradley (RPI 3 in the first round, then either Utah State (45) or Vanderbilt (47) on the second day.

That means the team they will play with the highest RPI last year will be Bradley!

[PTTB]

FWIW, with the UNI game...it's in the McLeod Center. You can pretty much guarantee it will be 90% (if not more) Panther fans. It hasn't been anything less than 75/25 UNI since Mac's first year.

As for the schedule...it is pretty 'home' friendly. Not too many tests on their.

[tornado]

Re: Iowa releases their non-conference schedule

Northern Colorado (RPI 336), Florida Gulf Coast (new to Div I- their RPI will be 330+)

I looked back and did a little digging.
As best as I can find, in all the years that I can find data (8
years), Bradley has never played a team anytime or anywhere
with RPI's this low, and certainly not two in one season at
home!!
This has to be one of the worst D-I schedules I have ever
seen, and certainly does constitute cheating the ticketholders.
Why not just ask a few of the local Iowa high school squads to
come over and scrimmage, as Iowa would get a better workout
that way.
Woe to the Hawkeyes if they should happen to lose one or
more of these easy cupcake games.
They are poised to become laughingstocks, and Lickliter is
setting himself up for a whole lot of criticism if they fail to beat
all these patsies!

[FarmerClone]

Even with that schedule, I will be shocked if the Hawks win more than 15 games.

And Iowa will have a very tough time getting more than 1000 fans in Hilton for ISU just like they will have a tough time getting tickets at UNI. Hilton holds 14,000 people and I am expecting ISU to sell 11,000 season tickets and most (if not all) of the other 3000 tickets will be purchased by ISU season ticket holders.

Iowa is going to be just plain bad this year and this is the type of schedule the need to develop their players and learn a new system. They will have a poor SOS, but they very likely will not be making post season plans anyhow so it really does not matter.