Few teams in men's college basketball are riding a hotter streak right now than Iowa. While Arizona and Michigan continue to dominate the national conversation at the top, the Hawkeyes are quietly building a résumé that’s hard to ignore-unless, apparently, you’re an AP voter.
After grinding out a tight win over Northwestern, Iowa extended its winning streak to six games and improved to 18-5 overall, with an 8-4 mark in Big Ten play. That puts them in seventh place in the conference standings, trailing five ranked teams and UCLA. In a league as deep and competitive as the Big Ten, that’s no small feat.
Yet despite their momentum, Iowa found itself on the outside looking in when the latest AP Top 25 poll dropped. Again.
The Hawkeyes were left unranked, even after sophomore guard Bennett Stirtz turned in one of the most electric performances of the season-dropping 36 points and carrying Iowa to a crucial win over the weekend. That kind of individual brilliance, paired with the team’s recent surge, felt like the perfect formula to crack the rankings. But the voters didn’t bite.
Instead, Iowa landed just outside the Top 25, pulling in 69 votes-good enough for what essentially amounts to the No. 27 spot. Alabama edged them out with 72 votes, while teams like BYU, Louisville, and Kentucky held firm in the rankings despite recent struggles.
BYU, for example, has dropped four of its last five, including losses to Texas Tech and an unranked Oklahoma State squad. Louisville, a six-loss team, barely scraped by a struggling Wake Forest. And Kentucky, while always a name-brand program, needed everything it had to sneak past Tennessee and is sitting with seven losses.
Meanwhile, Iowa has been stacking wins, showing consistency, and getting big-time performances when it matters most. The team is playing with confidence, poise, and a chip on its shoulder-something that’s becoming more evident with each passing game.
Still, as frustrating as the rankings might be for Hawkeye fans, here’s the good news: the only poll that truly matters is the one revealed on Selection Sunday. And Iowa has a golden opportunity to make an even louder statement in the coming week.
Next up are two high-impact matchups-against Purdue on February 14 and Nebraska on February 17. Both games offer Iowa the chance to not just add to the win column but to further solidify their case as one of the most dangerous teams in the country heading into March.
If they keep this up, the rankings won’t be able to ignore them much longer.