Matt Gatens is about as Iowa as it gets. He's an Iowa City native, former state Mr. Basketball, his father Mike played for the Hawkeyes while his mother Julie was a cheerleader. Gatens never would've looked quite right in anything except Hawkeye black and gold.

After a stellar senior season that earned Gatens second team media and third-team coaches all-conference honors, he's gone.

Gatens finished sixth in Iowa history with 1,635 points. He's also one of only two Hawkeyes to finish with more than 1,600 points, more than 400 rebounds, more than 250 assists and over 125 steals. During his final season, he averaged 15.2 points and 1.4 steals per game while shooting .410 from beyond the arc.

"Matt Gatens is one of the greatest Hawks of all-time," coach Fran McCaffery told The Hawkeye. "I'll always remember him."

With McCaffery in his second season, Gatens looks to be a catalyst for change. After five consecutive losing campaigns, Iowa finished a game over .500 this season at 18-17.

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It's amazing what a little energy from the audience can do to give the home team a boost. Maybe it's just a coincidence that Iowa played "one of its most complete games of the season" on Tuesday night during a tournament that has many schools struggling to sell tickets. Or maybe the rush of playing in front of 13,000 crazy people pushed the Hawkeyes onward to an 84-75 victory over Dayton in what will turn out to be their last home game this season.

Said coach Fran McCaffery, "I just want to say how happy I am for these guys and how thankful I am for the Hawkeye fans to show up the way they did tonight, which was absolutely amazing. We didn't know we were having a game until Sunday night, and 13,000 people show up in less than 48 hours."

Black Heart Gold Pants does a good job describing the scene:

The mania is easy to understand. It had been six years since Iowa played their last post-season basketball game. Six years. It was as if the fans had been on a hunger strike and then got to break it at the Golden Corral. They gobbled up every morsel of good play, and the Hawks gave them plenty: numerous Aaron White dunks (including an amazing one off a half-court lob from Bryce Cartwright that made SportsCenters top plays), a sick Melsahn Basabe reverse dunk, and Zach McCabe owning the interior like he was Shaquille O'Neal -- and that was just in the first three minutes.

I watched a decent portion of this game while flipping back and forth with the MVSU vs. Western Kentucky game and the two things that stood out were how enthusiastic the crowd was and how easily Iowa was able to run down the floor for buckets against the Dayton defense. Most of the teams Iowa upset this season (Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana) are on the small side. Dayton isn't exactly huge either and it didn't have the size to contain Aaron White or Melsahn Basabe.

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The NIT is a polarizing event in that it means very different things to different programs. For teams with serious NCAA Tournament hopes like Washington and Seton Hall, the NIT might be something of a consolation prize that acts as a reminder that they came so darn close to the big dance. For Iowa, however, at least for this season, the NIT invitation was treated with great regard.

Matt Gatens sounded absolutely elated when talking about the chance to extend his senior season for at least one more game.

"It's incredible," Gatens said. "You don't want to take the jersey off. You want to keep playing. It's a great opportunity to continue to play, wear the Hawkeye uniform, try to keep winning and chase a championship."

Thanks to a rough start to the season that included losses to Campbell and Northern Iowa, the Hawkeyes didn't come into Big Ten play with many postseason aspirations. However, under coach Fran McCaffery's leadership, Iowa greatly improved over the course of the season and earned victories over some of the best teams in the country.

"We are absolutely thrilled," McCaffery said. "I'm so proud of our guys and how they persevered and grew throughout the season. We have a phenomenal leader and captain in Matt Gatens and we got great play from Bryce Cartwright. Our young guys really developed throughout the course of the season."

One of those young guys,freshman forward Aaron White, talked to The Cleveland Plain-Dealer about what he has to do to get better for next season.

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Iowa has had it rough for a while now. Former Hoosier Steve Alford didn't leave the program in good shape when he left in 2007. Todd Lickliter's conference record in three years as head coach was 15-39. That was bad enough to warrant his firing, but the agonizingly slow tempo of his Hawkeye teams made the losing that much worse.

Last season was Fran McCaffery's first at the helm. His uptempo Siena teams were fun to watch, and, more importantly, they won a lot of games in the MAAC. McCaffery quickly turned Iowa into a run-and-gun team, jumping from ninth to first in the conference in possessions per forty minutes. Iowa fans were generally happy with the team's performance, even though they didn't pick up very many wins. The season-ending win against Purdue gave fans a reason to rush the court that day, and a reason to be optimistic about the future.

The Purdue win now seems more like a fluke than a harbinger of things to come (in the short term, at least). In my season preview post, I argued that the second year of the McCaffery rebuilding project would start to show some dividends in the form of a significant number of wins. I sort of hedged my bets at the end of the post, but I thought an NIT bid seemed possible if not probable.

An NIT bid is a pipe dream at this point for Iowa. Their record stands at 6-5 after Saturday's game against Drake. Even the most optimistic Iowa prognosticators don't have them going 8-10 in conference play, which is what they would need to reach the NIT. That record also assumes that they will win their final two non-con games, which is definitely not a given.

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Last year, Iowa hired Fran McCaffery to turn their struggling program around. Their previous coach Todd Lickliter was fired after his slow-paced brand of basketball failed to translate into wins. The record wasn't great last season, but Iowa fans are happy with the direction of the program. McCaffery installed a fast, attacking style, played in a lot of close games, had a big upset win over Purdue, and landed a top big man in Adam Woodbury for 2012.

Iowa will have to replace Jarryd Cole, a power forward who averaged about 8 ppg and 6 rpg, and Cully Payne, a point guard who was injured most of last season and decided to transfer. Cole was the emotional leader of the team and the win against Purdue was a good way to cap off his college career. Payne was a starter for most of his freshman season, but he was ably replaced last year and decided to try his luck somewhere else.

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Last year was Fran McCaffery's first as head coach of the Iowa Hawkeyes. While the overall results were not impressive, the uptempo play of last season was a welcome change from the grind-it-out pace of Todd Lickliter. Beating Purdue in the last game of the season was McCaffery's first signature win, and Iowa fans hope that it is a harbinger of things to come.

The Big Ten released the full basketball schedule earlier in the week, so let's take a look.

The non-conference schedule is lackluster, but it features a lot of games against nearby schools (all of the non-conference games take place in-state). The Missouri Valley Conference has three teams facing Iowa: Creighton, Northern Iowa and Drake. The B1G/ACC Challenge game with Clemson and the rivalry game with Iowa State are the only games against teams from major conferences. Iowa vs. Boise State would be a big deal if it were a football game, but it's not.

As far as the conference schedule, Iowa might have the easiest schedule in the conference. Iowa only has to play Michigan, Michigan State, Illinois and Ohio State one time each. Even with that advantage, the Hawkeyes are still going to have to beat some pretty good teams to finish the season with a respectable record.

The Big Ten schedule starts out hard for Iowa, with six out of the first seven games against opponents who played in the NCAA tourney last year. The only break in that stretch is a game at Minnesota (which isn't much of a break). The rest of the season is mostly against teams that finished in the bottom half of the conference last year, with a couple of tougher games thrown in.

Click on to see Iowa's full schedule with TV information.

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Thusfar in Fran McCaffery's year and a half of recruiting at Iowa, he hasn't landed that signature recruit to begin rebuilding the program around. 

In fact, McCaffery himself hasn't signed a single Hawkeye since getting Melsahn Basabe. What the program has brought in, though, is a handful of potential diamonds in the rough. And that's what the Iowa faithful have pinned their hopes on -- potential.

The big names have passed on Iowa City. Cezar Guerrero, a four-star point guard from California, was the first of two recruits to spurn the Hawkeyes this week, signing with Oklahoma State.

Wes Washpun, from Washington High (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), opted to be Cuonzo Martin's first signing at Tennessee instead of following I-380 south. Washpun's decision stung a little extra because Iowa has already signed his high school teammate Josh Oglesby, who will be a freshman next season.

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