Happy March Madness to all those who celebrate!
The NCAA Tournament is officially here with action kicking off on Thursday, March 19th for the men and Friday, March 20th for the women. This year marks the first time since 2023 where both the Iowa men and women are dancing.
While both teams are in the Big Dance, their outlooks are a bit different. The Iowa men earned a 9-seed in the South region and will face off with 8-seed Clemson on Friday evening. That’s a bit of a tumble after the Hawkeyes had
a mini collapse, losing five of their final seven games to close out the year.
But late-season struggles aside, the Hawkeyes ARE in the tournament and that’s something to celebrate in the first year under a new head coach. The question now is how far will they go?
It’s a tough draw for the Hawkeyes, who will square off with a Tigers team that has similar DNA, looking to slow things down and grind teams to a pulp on defense. If they do happen to get a win, their prize is a date with top-seeded Florida in Tampa in the second round. Not ideal.
Hawkeye fans are relatively confident Iowa can get the job done against Clemson. A full 78% of respondents in this week’s Reacts poll have Iowa advancing past the first round. That’s about as far as they’re expected to go, however. Only 10% of fans have them winning to advance to their first Sweet Sixteen in 27 years.
As for the experts, the folks in Vegas are pretty closely aligned with the fanbase. Iowa is a 2.5-point favorite in their first round matchup with Clemson according to FanDuel Sportsbook with odds at -142 to win outright.
Looking ahead, however, Iowa is +650 to advance to the Sweet 16, +1300 to make the Elite 8 and +10000 to make the Final Four. At that point, you might want to just tap in at +30000 for them to win the whole damn thing.
If you’re interested in other odds for the tournament, be sure to check out BoilerHawk’s Odds Round Up from Thursday morning.
Iowa Women Prepped for Deep Run
Turning to the women, the fanbase is much more optimistic. That makes sense given the immense success the Hawkeyes have had in recent years. The Hawks have made the tournament every year it was held dating back to 2017. They’ve made it to the Sweet 16 or better in all but three of those years.
That’s been aided in part by the in-season success. Iowa has been a top-5 seed in all but two years dating back to 2017 and each time they’ve advanced to the Sweet 16 or better, save for a 2022 second round loss to #10 Creighton.
This year, Iowa is again a 2-seed and prepped to face off with 15-seed Farleigh Dickinson. They, of course, have the added benefit of playing their two opening round games at home in Carver. That should help them bounce back after falling in the second round a year ago to the 3-seed Oklahoma.
Iowa is favored 31.5 points against FDU with odds to win outright not offered by FanDuel. Nobody in the fanbase picked the Hawkeyes to lose that opener with just 5% of respondents expecting them to fall in the second round.
Notably, the most popular pick was for Iowa to advance to the Elite 8 with 53% of respondents expecting three straight tournament wins out of the Hawkeyes. Nearly 10% of fans have Iowa making the Final Four.
While the Iowa men play at 5:50pm CT on Friday night, the Iowa women will start their NCAA Tournament journey at 3:00pm CT on Saturday afternoon in Carver.
You can catch the men on TNT while the women’s game will be broadcast on ESPN.
