The Iowa men’s basketball team is already receiving hype as a potential dark horse pick to win the national championship next season (provided Luka Garza and returns to school, of course). Should the Hawkeyes manage to shock the nation next spring, they would accomplish something that no Iowa basketball team has managed to achieve in program history.
There was one Iowa team that came perilously close to winning the big dance, however. Bucky O’Connor’s 1955-1956 Iowa men’s basketball team, composed of one of the most talented and balanced starting lineups in program history, came about as close as a team can get to cutting down the nets before being defeated in the national championship game.