The Ohio State game was one the Hawkeyes could have won. But, as happened so often in the regular season, they couldn’t play defense, committed too many turnovers (19) and got outcoached.

So they lost, 81-64, to abruptly halt a dream some fans were having that they would—for the second consecutive year—sweep four consecutive games in the tournament and go into the NCAA tournament on a high.

A reporter or two tried hard to find excuses (they sometimes do that) for why the Hawkeyes lost. They asked Luke Recker if the team was tired after playing four games in four days.

Recker wasn’t buying it. He said, sure, he was tired, but so was Ohio State, which played three consecutive days.

Iowa’s miserable performance against the Buckeyes meant there will be no NCAA. Just the NIT, a consolation tournament that most teams don’t want to play in and most fans don’t want to watch.

Recker said the Hawkeyes couldn’t afford to have problems getting aroused for the NIT because "that’s all we have left.’’

Pretty sad for a team that not only had Recker, but also a marvelous rebounder in Reggie Evans.

Pretty sad for a team that was expected to be a challenger for the conference’s regular-season title.

Pretty sad for a team whose coach should be drawing up a game plan today for an NCAA opponent instead of LSU in the NIT.

Just as they did when Iowa played in Bloomington, Ind., earlier in the season, the fans booed Recker—a former Indiana player—every time he got the ball.

So I joined lots of other people in being happy that Recker’s last-second took Indiana out of the tournament, 62-60.

The display by Indiana’s fans was classless, but no more classless than what fans in other places are demonstrating these days.

The Iowa State fans who booed Iowans Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison on Jan. 23 when Kansas won at Hilton Coliseum in Ames certainly showed no class.

And the Iowa football fans who booed their own quarterback—Kyle McCann—in the game against Michigan last season showed no class.

Unfortunately, that’s what’s happened to college athletics these days.

Oklahoma took care of that with its victory over the Jayhawks in the Big 12 Conference tournament finale at Kansas City.

The stunner came before what was pretty much a Kansas home crowd at Kemper Arena and again raised questions about whether Jayhawks Coach Roy Williams can win the big one.

Before Sunday, I was ready to name Kansas as my NCAA champion.

Now I’ve changed my mind.

I hate to say it, but Duke again is my choice.

But, if I were you, I wouldn’t want to make a habit of losing more games than you win.

In a year when accomplishments by the men’s Division I teams were nothing to speak of, the women’s teams from Drake, Iowa State and Iowa have made the NCAA tournament field again.

If we didn’t know it before, we know it now. The power is with the women.

"I think you must put a school like Drake in perspective,’’ Alive in Clive says in his e-mail. "Tough learning standards, located in the heart of the city and only so much money to spend. A ‘name’ experienced coach might help, as did Eldon Miller at UNI, but those chances don’t come often.’’

Miller, a one-time coach at Ohio State, had some good teams later in his career at UNI.

Like Iowa, like Minnesota, like a lot of other teams, Georgetown received a bid to play in the NIT.

Georgetown said thanks, but no thanks.

Georgetown will stay home.

Craig Esherick, who coaches the Hoyas, said he didn’t want his players to miss classes just so they could play a road game in the NIT.

I’m sure there are a more than a few other coaches who should be sending their players to class and not to a meaningless NIT game.

The only other time a team turned down an NIT bid was in 1987, when Louisville said no a year after winning the NCAA title.

I can’t say for sure if Louisville’s players were going to class in those days.

It was good to see that there’s a face and some writing ability behind a name. The column gave the guy a start in connecting with people who have been wondering about whatever happened to the paper Iowa used to depend on.

And it was good to see that the "Editor’s Notes’’ column, which has gone unoccupied for a long, long time, finally has a tenant.

Still, I have questions. A new editor can write all he wants about the geese flying over Iowa and how friendly the lady at Burger King was to him.

Unless I overlooked it, the column made no promises that the paper will:

Send a worthwhile product anytime soon into Iowa City, Cedar Rapids and Davenport that will have in it the results of an Iowa basketball game that finishes at 9 o’clock the night before.

Improve the business section, as publisher Mary Stier has said it must do.

Hire a Joan Bunke-type writer who has the ability to intelligently review movies, so the paper doesn’t have to continually depend on nationally-syndicated writers.

Assign staff writers to contribute to the travel section instead of depending on reporters from USA Today and free-lancers. As far as I’m concerned, reporters from national newspaper USA Today (like the Register, a Gannett Co. product) should never have their bylines in the Register. People have already read those USA Today stories in airports and hotel lobbies a week before.

Find someone on the staff, or in town, to write book reviews instead of depending on reviewers from newspapers in Orlando, Detroit and Hartford. Surely someone in Des Moines reads books and can write about them.

Make sure all of the football and basketball games played by high schools in Greater Des Moines are covered. Depending on the coach or the student manager to call in the results of a Valley game is an atrocious policy. A sportswriter told me that when Anger addressed the department recently, he said there would be changes in the future, but he didn’t know what they’d be. Let’s hope getting all the high school results in the paper is one of them.

Handle medicine and health news the way it should be handled by a metropolitan paper in the 21^st century. It’s one of the most important issues in the world these days.

Load up the gas tank in one of the company cars and send a sportswriter to Lincoln every time Nebraska has a home football game. Not covering the Huskers in bowl games is bad enough; not covering them in Lincoln in inexcusable.

Anger says he wants to hear from readers.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, he’s already e-mailed me that he doesn’t care to read my columns. That came after my essay on Stier, which outlined her plans to improve the paper, appeared on the national Poynter Institute website for everyone around the world interested in newspapers to read. In that essay, I also gave some of my own opinions on what’s wrong with the paper.

Something tells me the truth hurt in a thin-skinned business.

So one of you other folks in the newsroom who receive these columns will have to tell Anger what I thought about his cute column.