I admit that I am biased about the Iowa Hawkeye women’s basketball team. I have spent nearly all of my life in Iowa. Raised in eastern Iowa, I grew up following University of Iowa sports teams, listening to Iowa football on Saturdays and Iowa basketball on Mondays and Saturdays. I remember Chuck Darling and Frank Calsbeek, the “Twin Towers'” they were called.

I was heartbroken when the “Fabulous Five” of Bucky O’Connor’s men lost to the University of San Francisco (with Bill Russel and KC Jones) in the 1956 NCAA championship game. The 1956 champion USF Dons finished the season undefeated. (Déjà vu for the 2024 Hawkeye women?) Iowa had lost in the semifinals of the NCAA tournament a year earlier in 1955.

Lute Olson’s 1980 men’s team improbably reached the NCAA semifinals before losing to Louisville. The Hawkeyes, a No. 5 seed, defeated No. 1 Syracuse and No. 3 Georgetown along the way.

The 1993 Hawk women reached the Final Four before losing to Ohio State in overtime.

Those teams were very popular in Iowa, of course, but none attracted the national attention like the 2023-24 Hawk ladies. Yes, television had a lot to do with it. So did Caitlin Clark. Iowa games drew increasingly large television audiences, setting records on several networks. Like millions of others, I became a huge fan of the Hawkeye women in total and Caitlin Clark in particular.

They play basketball the way the game was once played with passing, back-cuts, and off-ball movement and, of course, shooting. Today’s game, it seems, is mostly dunks and 3-point shots. Iowa, and Clark in particular, brought 3- pointers to the front of attention.

“Logo 3s” is a phrase that might make it into the new edition of the dictionary. It didn’t exist until this year, thanks to you-know-who. The depth of those shots has enlarged the offensive end of the court by several feet.

I admire the record-setting accomplishments of Clark and the success of her team the past two years but winning is important but not the end-all of sport despite the ravings of knuckleheads who think you have to win a championship or greatness doesn’t count.

I admire most of all the way Lisa Bluder’s ladies conducted themselves both on and off the basketball court.

No finger-pointing, no holding up ring fingers, no chest-thumping, no in-your-face derision.

Sportsmanship has largely disappeared from all sports. After all, ESPN won’t include any such act in its nightly highlight reel. It would rather display thundering dunks and violent fouls and other brazen look-at-me events.

The Iowa women lost the game but won a bigger contest, that of how to conduct yourself when you are in the eyes of millions of fans.

By they way, Bluder (the under-rated Lisa Bluder) putting injured season-long starter Mollie Davis in at end of the game so that she could say she played in the NCAA championship game was the kind of thing that makes the Iowa women’s team so likable, win or lose. It may be a few years before we see another team like it.

I am going to miss you.