The goodbyes are never easy.

Unless the unexpected happens and Drake receives an invitation to the women’s NIT, Carla Bennett has played her last collegiate game. So has Ja’Nae Mosley.

They were the only seniors on a Bulldogs team that bowed out of the Missouri Valley Conference’s postseason tournament with a 61-59 loss to Southwest Missouri State.

I’m hoping those are the last goodbyes Drake’s fans have to endure.

With more teams ending their season, with more coaches being fired, more coaches retiring, this is a nervous time for athletic administrators who are trying to hang onto the successful people they have.

Drake is one of those. Stone, who has had records of 25-7, 25-8 and 16-12, is going to find her name on a number of lists put together by search committees looking for new coaches.

Surely, Stone will listen. She owes that to herself and her family.

But I hope she doesn’t listen very long.

I hope Drake goes the extra mile and makes her feel appreciated. It would be a shame to lose her.

"I had a lot of friends and family here," said the woman who was named Southwest’s coach last May 14. "Did you see the crazy guy who was doing all that screaming out there? That was my brother."

Abrahamson-Henderson is a native of Cedar Rapids who played at Georgia and Iowa, received degrees from Iowa and Duquesne and was an assistant coach at Iowa State from 1992-94.

Her husband, Michael Henderson, is a National Basketball Association official.

Meg Tierney of LaPorte City, Ia., a 6-1 junior forward for Southwest, transferred from Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids. She had six points and five rebounds as Southwest improved its record to 16-12.

Mary Ann Tierney, the public relations assistant who is the spokeswoman for Drake’s women’s basketball program, said she isn’t related to Meg Tierney. However, Mary Ann was a pretty fair high school player herself in her competitive days.

He somehow doesn’t seem to be the genius he once was.

It won’t happen, but plenty of people in the Twin Cities hope the Gophers do themselves a favor and reject an invitation to the NIT.

It’s obvious they called it quits a couple of weeks ago.

And, just think, some folks with brainlock were still thinking Minnesota might sneak into the NCAA tournament by beating Northwestern.

Has the college game sunk that low?

Iowa State by 27 points over Texas A&M and Ohio State by two over Iowa.

Well, not really.

That tells you something about conference postseason tournaments. And about guys who forecast the results.

I guess I thought Iowa would beat Ohio State by six points in the Big Ten tournament at Chicago, and Iowa State and Texas A&M would play to a tie in their Big 12 game at Dallas.

Why? Because the Hawkeyes (15-13) usually do so well in the Big Ten tournament and they manhandled Ohio State late in a Feb. 25 victory at Columbus.

And, oh, sure, I know they don’t play ties in basketball, but how else are you going to pick a game between Iowa State, which hadn’t been able to win anywhere but Hilton Coliseum in Ames and Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City, and Texas A&M, which has never won a game in the Big 12 tournament since the conference was formed seven years ago?

But, after leading at halftime, 27-23, Iowa managed to get outscored, 11-0, and fell behind, 59-47, before making a game of it at the end.

"Not to downplay (Ohio State’s) zone defense because I think they worked hard, but we weren’t making shots," Iowa coach Steve Alford said on his radio show after his team’s 66-64 loss. "We’ve got to find a way to make some perimeter shots, and obviously in the last three weeks we haven’t been able to do that."

Guard Jeff Horner was scoreless against the Buckeyes, missing all six of his field goal attempts—five of them from beyond the three-point stripe.

"He hasn’t played well for three weeks since his injury," Alford said. "Hopefully, he can get healed up and have a good postseason for us."

Whatever postseason is ahead for Iowa is the NIT. The Hawkeyes will learn their fate Sunday night after the NCAA field is full.

"Hopefully, we can get some momentum going into the NIT," said guard Brody Boyd, who gave Iowa a last-half lift and scored all of his 15 points on three-point baskets.

"We knew they were going to (Brent) Darby," Boyd said of the Ohio State guard who scored the game-winning basket with 1.8 seconds left and finished with 18 points. "He came off the pick-and-roll and scored."

The NIT is usually about as interesting around here as watching Larry Eustachy pick out another turtleneck at K-Mart (remember Iowa against LSU last season?), but this one could be lively if Iowa State and Iowa somehow can be matched up in, say, a second-round game.

But the Cyclones aren’t ready to think about the NIT yet. At least guard Jake Sullivan isn’t.

Sullivan, who scored 17 points in the 97-70 romp past Texas A&M, can’t wait to play Kansas.

"That’s what we want—we want the best," he said on the Iowa State radio show. "They beat us twice pretty good. We have a bad taste in our mouths from (our game) down there. We’re going to come out, give them a fight—and we really believe we can win."

If that happens, the league had better take blood and urine samples in both locker rooms after the game.

Kansas clobbered Iowa State, 83-54, at Ames, and beat the Cyclones, 70-51, at Lawrence, Kan. In the second game, Eustachy was ejected after drawing two technical fouls in the last half."

By the way Eustachy skipped the Iowa State radio show after the game—at least while I was listening to Eric Heft’s interviews. Assistant coach Steve Barnes was Eustachy’s substitute.

Maybe my very good friend Larry was cutting down the nets in the arena. Or else he was already at K-Mart, picking out tomorrow’s turtleneck. There’s also the possibility he was using his cell phone to call the chairman of the Greater Des Moines Cyclone Club, volunteering to be the main speaker at the next meeting.