Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Matt Crawford joins us to discuss the final roster for the TBT team and give a special announcement for Iowa Hawkeye fans

Episode Date: April 13, 2019

Matt Crawford, GM of the Iowa United, joins us to discuss the final roster for TBT, the $2 million winner take all tournament + he makes a special announcement about Nicholas Baer and how he will be representing the Iowa Hawkeyes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are listening to the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering the Iowa Hawkeyes for the Locked On Sports Network, hosted by Andrew Wade, editor at DearOldGold.com. Welcome to a beautiful Saturday morning episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Wade, editor over at DearOldGold.com, and we have a very special episode coming at you this Saturday morning, just like we did last week when we gave you an interview with Matthew Crawford, the general manager of the Iowa United. We did that last Sunday, so if you are tuning in for the very first time, it might be good to check out last Sunday's interview with Matt

as we talked about the initial creation of the Iowa United, which is a team comprised of the four major universities in the state of Iowa, plus another outstanding player who is from the state of Iowa. They are combining together to play in the basketball tournament, a $2 million winner-take-all tournament that's going to be starting in mid-July and going through August. It is a great, great team for a great cause. They're playing for For the Veterans,

and we've talked a lot about them on the podcast this week and last Sunday with Matt as they had announced four players at that time. They had announced Nicholas Bayer, Wes Washpin, Tyrus McGee, and Reed Timmer. So at that time, there had been four players that had been announced for the Iowa United. Since that time, this past week, on Iowa United's Twitter account, at Iowa TBT, they've been announcing the other five remaining players. Those five remaining players include Drake's Josh Young,

Drake's Nick McGlynn, Iowa's very own Peter Jock, Iowa State's Marcus Fizer, and Matt Tybee from UW-Milwaukee, a former Kirkwood standout and a player who is from Urbandale, Iowa originally. So it makes sense to include on this Iowa United team. So with that being said, though, we are going to be interviewing Matt again as he talks to us about the addition of these five guys, how those five guys kind of round out this nine-player roster, kind of what it means for the state of Iowa, obviously having these nine guys playing together, what's been the reception so far, and also talk about their coaching staff, their training staff, and a few of the other integral parts of their team that have kind of helped get this thing off the ground. And then finally, at the very end, we have a very special announcement with a lot of you Iowa Hawkeye fans are going to really appreciate this. So stay tuned for the very end. We have a very special announcement about the Iowa United team with Nicholas Bayer and the Iowa Hawkeyes. So that's just a little bit of a teaser about what that special announcement is going to be. It's kind of exciting. A lot of you Iowa fans are going to really enjoy and appreciate the respect that this Iowa United team is showing for the Hawkeye faithful in this tournament. If you are tuning in though for the first time, or if you've tuned in the last couple episodes, please feel free to like and subscribe our podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or

wherever you get your podcast at. It helps us out. We appreciate the feedback. You can also find us on Twitter at LockedOnIowa and Facebook at LockedOnHawkeyes. And you can find me on Twitter at Wade underscore Andrew. So again, just doing some quick housekeeping of things that you can do to make sure you're in the know of the LockedOnHawkeyes podcast. We also had a fantastic interview on Wednesday morning with Deuce Hogan, four-star quarterback out of Texas who has committed to play for the Iowa Hawkeyes. He is from the class of 2020. Great episode with a great

young man, great head on his shoulders, so make sure you check that out. And we have some really exciting content coming your way. We have the all-time receptions leader in Iowa football history, Kevontae Martin-Manley, is coming on the show early this upcoming week to talk about his life, talk about football, and to talk about his life, talk about football, and to talk about the earn the fifth mentality. So stay tuned for some of the great stuff we are getting out to you on the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. That being said, though, let's jump into it for today.

We have a great interview with Matthew Crawford talking about the finalization of this Iowa United roster, talking about their coach, Jake Sullivan, talking about their trainer, Vic from Iowa State, and all the other integral parts of this team, including a very special announcement that we are giving out to you at the end of the show in regards to Nicholas Bayer and the Iowa Hawkeyes. So stay tuned for that right now. We are joined again here by Matthew Crawford, the general manager of the Iowa United. Matt, you just released five new players for filling out your nine-player roster. Matt, you know, you just released five new players for your, you know, kind of filling out your nine-player roster.

Tell me a little bit about this team and kind of what you were trying to do with this nine-player roster. Yeah, yeah, we're excited to finally release those guys. You know, we've gotten a lot of interest, you know, Twitter. We've got just, you know, good piling up followers, which is great. Good to see that there's a lot of interest but yeah we uh released the uh kind of that final five and um you know like like i said last time we were on you know we got a lot bigger uh you know we added uh matt tybee uh from you know he's an urbandale kid um you know marcus pfizer marcus pfizer's been back in the gym for i don't know a couple months now

he's trains with his his uh his uh kid and uh you know he's excited to be back and then you know uh uh uh gosh just slipped my my brain there nick mcglenn nick mcglenn sorry uh and then and then nick mcglenn so you know kind of uh you know those three guys alone you know you got a you know, kind of, you know, those three guys alone, you know, you've got a, you know, a Missouri Valley defensive player of the year. You know, Matt, you know, was, you know, just a big rebounding guy there in the Horizon League over in Wisconsin-Milwaukee. So that was kind of one of the things we wanted to do. We wanted to add some toughness to that front court a little bit. And we think we've done that pretty well with those guys. Those guys are not going to get pushed around by anybody.

And, you know, we got some feedback, you know, hey, why not get somebody like, you know, Jameel McKay or, you know, this, that, and the other. And we took that into consideration. But at the end, we kind of, we wanted to give, we gave up a little bit of maybe mobility and certain types of post guys that we had in kind of our player pool uh for kind of that size and to be honest with you those guys have a little edge to them they're they're sometimes they're a little mean yeah so they're not going to get pushed around by anybody uh so and that's

what we're looking for with those uh kind of that kind of interior yeah i think i think it's interesting having all three of those guys here i think it's gonna be a really great fit yeah yeah i think and you know they're all unselfish so you know one of the things is on this team that you know if you look up and down the roster uh you know we don't have a guy that's gonna demand the ball uh you know get up you know 20 25 shots a game they're all very unselfish guys very smart players um and that's you know another thing we kind of took into account where we were kind of finishing out uh this roster so you've got a nice mix of veterans with guys like marcus um you know josh young um you know but then you've got some young guys like Nick and the two

Knicks, rather, that are, you know, just fresh out of school. So I think it's a nice blend. I couldn't agree more. And, you know, kind of, it's interesting when you look at that roster, and I wanted to touch on this a little bit today, but the Drake Bulldogs have historically not been the top team in the state. I mean, they've had one year in the past 10 years where they made the tournament. Actually, one year in the past, I want to say 13 years, they've made the tournament.

And this past year, they had a great season. But three of the guys in the roster are Bulldogs. And I think for the people who are not as familiar with Drake, obviously I'm pretty familiar with Drake being an alum from there. These guys are players. And I think I want to make sure that we touch on the fact that you pulled three of the top players in drake's history um to be on this team which i think is fantastic i think you can look at the roster and see three

drake guys and sometimes maybe cringe a little bit nothing against drake but in the past you know the past several years have been kind of a struggling struggling team so i wanted to get your thoughts on having those three guys and what that means for you yeah i mean the direct thing you know isn't even a factor i mean anybody that's seen any of these three guys play josh uh reed and nick they could play anywhere um and they will play everywhere um you know reed's doing a great job overseas josh is just tearing it up overseas um and nick is just starting his career so you, you know, wherever he lands, uh, he's going to be great, uh, just cause he's such a hard worker. Um, so yeah, we're, we're thrilled to have three bulldogs and it's fun for that fan base

because, you know, uh, you know, like we talked about before, we don't have the big four classic anymore. Um, so this is a great way for the, everybody's fan base to get involved. And it's, it's great to see that we've gotten a good interest from the Drake fans. They're excited to see these three guys kind of get together as well. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Just kind of listing off some of the stats when I was doing some research on some of the articles we posted on Derald Gold, but Josh Young right now is averaging 12 points. He's shooting 37% from behind the three-point line and 44% from the

field. Reed Timmer is destroying it right now. He's crushing it. I believe, let me pull up his stats, he's actually shooting 44% from the field and 38.8% from three. That was his career averages. And, you know, right now in Europe, he's doing even better. I think he's averaging like 40% or 42% from behind the arc, which is absolutely impressive.

Yeah, and nothing really surprising if you've ever watched any of these guys play I mean it's just that's their game and they at any level that's going to work and so yeah we're excited to have those those three guys with us and they're excited too and that's that's a big part of it I love it and how has it been bringing some of these guys together have you been able to pull from the other guys saying, hey, we're bringing Tyrus McGee and talk to Nick McGlynn or Peter Jock, whoever it may be, and say, hey, we're bringing some of these guys in. You should come. I know we talked a little bit about that Marcus Fizer connection.

But have you been able to kind of lean on some of these other guys to kind of recruit the other remaining players on the team? Yeah, a little bit. I mean, yeah, you talk to them, you know, especially when it's the same school. So some of those guys will ch? Yeah, a little bit. I mean, yeah, you talk to, you know, especially when it's the same school. So some of those guys will chit-chat a little bit. And so I think, you know, and especially with Josh, Josh was one of the first guys I think we got. And, you know, so, you know, we didn't really specifically say, you know,

ask Josh to call or anything like that. Sometimes we don't, we didn't do that. But just that they know, oh, well, Josh is on the team. Okay, well, that'd be fun to play with another Bulldog. Hey, Tyrus is on the team. That'd be fun to put Marcus to never play with Tyrus. So I'm sure there is some of that. Nick and Pete, that was one of the things Nicholas Baer said

was great to play with Pete again. So there is a little bit of that, yeah. Interesting. And I think, I mean, from a Bulldog perspective, Josh Young is a legacy there. I mean, he's a guy whose reputation kind of exceeds itself. He's been a great ambassador for the community, giving back with some of his basketball clinics and stuff in the Des Moines area.

And just the run that the Bulldogs had back in 2007 and 2008 is something that a lot of Drake fans will kind of remember for a really long time. So I think that was obviously a huge get for a Bulldog fan base. And then being able to pull in Timmer and Nick McGlynn gives you some of that recency of two of the better players to come through the Drake Bulldog program. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so what is, you know, you just announced that the head coach is going to be Jake Sullivan, a former Iowa State player, and the trainer is going to be Vic Miller, also from Iowa State. What has getting them into this program been like for you?

Was it easy recruiting them to join the Iowa United? And what do you think Jake Sullivan brings as a head coach? Is he going to be able to bring these pieces together in a way that's going to allow you to go far in the basketball tournament? Yeah, we think so. You know, we love Jake. You know, I was telling you before we got started, you know, I think I met Jake, we may have given him one of his first camps to do, working at the New York YMCA.

He came right out of college and started running camps for us, so we kind of chatted about that, and he was like, oh, yeah, I do remember that. So, yeah, we've kind of known Jake for a little while. But, you know, anybody that knows Jake knows what just a great guy he is with his work, you know, that he does overseas in Africa, very charitable in that way. And, you know, that's something, you know, for me personally that I really admire about him. But, you know,'s his uh you know

he founded kingdom hoops um so he's been he's been integral in the uh kind of landscape of uh basketball here in the state of iowa with with our youth and so we know what a great communicator is we know he knows the game um and so we're we're thrilled to have him on board, and he's excited about it. So, yeah, we think he's a perfect fit for us to coach this year's squad. I love it. I mean, he's known for being an assassin from behind the three-point line as well, and you have your list of players who can shoot the three. I mean, it's going to be tough to roll out a lineup with less than three guys on the floor at any given point that can shoot the three-pointer pretty well,

which will be pretty exciting and fun for that team. Yeah, and that's one of the things we talked about. You know, when we released those first four, you know, we hear things. Yeah. So we said, you know, we said, just be patient. You know, guys are coming, and you're going to see when this gets rolled out that it's a pretty versatile group. You know, I talked to Jake the other night. I was like, I go, I'm going to be honest with you. I that it's a pretty versatile group yeah um you know i talked

to jake the other night i was like i go i'm gonna be honest with you i don't know who you're starting uh i don't know because you know you got you've got some guys uh you know that you can roll out there we can go you know you can roll a big lineup out there with you know marcus and and tybee and nick and a couple shooters or he can just flood the whole floor with shooters. And Matt Tybee is another guy. Let me say something about Matt. We knew going in, we're like, you know, nobody's going to know who Matt is. Like, you know, he didn't go to one of the four schools.

People are going to be surprised how good this guy is. You know, and I tell you the story, you know, we're kind of going through our player pool and, you know, we kind of started kind of mentioning, story, you know, we're kind of going through our player pool, and, you know, we kind of started kind of mentioning to guys, you know, hey, what do you think of Matt Tybee? I swear, more than any player, guys were going, yes, get him. Go get him. And I was like, okay.

You know, I've seen Matt play at Cap City and stuff. I'm fortunate I didn't see him at Wisconsin-Milwaukee. But this is one where I was like, hey, these guys are, these guys have to want this guy. Let's go get him. So, and Matt is just a wonderful person. He's been great and responsive, and he's active with our Twitter account and stuff like that.

So people are going to be surprised how good a player he is, how hard a worker he is. Good stretch forward. He can step out as well. But he's a big kid. He can beat you up a little bit. So, yeah, we're thrilled to have Matt with us as well. Yeah, I mean, when we talked about the roster before, I wasn't really sure who Matt, you

know, type he was. And I looked up some of his, you know, stats and saw some of his, you know, some of the games on YouTube and whatnot. And the guy averaged 15.6 points per game while pulling in 8.2 rebounds his senior year. He also shot 37.4% from three. So like I said, an incredible stretch forward. Gives you even more versatility on the floor. Even if you go to a big lineup,

you still probably have three or four three-point shooters at any given time. And I think that's obviously a huge weapon for you all. And then like you said, you can go small if you want to. I mean, Peter Jock's 6'6". Nicholas Bayer's nicholas bears six seven i mean you could still go pretty small light up yeah and they still have some pretty good height there which i think is really impressive yeah yeah you know like i said it's a it's a it's what we kind of said when we kind of started rolling this out i was like just be patient it's a very versatile group um and that's what kind of

what we've put together and yeah you know like i said you you only have so the player pool is only so big uh but you know if you kind of waved your magic wand and said you know here's the guys you could get and here's the nine guys you're gonna get these would pretty much be the nine you'd say yeah that's kind of who you you should go get so uh we're excited about it. I love it. And let's talk a little bit about Peter Jopp because he was a recent announcement as well, been currently playing in the G League with the Northern Arizona Suns.

Was it difficult to get him to come on board? I mean, obviously, I know it can be difficult kind of dealing with the guys who are a little bit more entrenched with the NBA life. Obviously, he's in the developmental league. But was it tough to get him on board? Are you excited about what his potential is? He almost carried an Iowa Hawkeye team that was pretty young and pretty depleted to the NCAA tournament all by himself. Yeah. Pete, I've got to give a lot of thanks to you. When we first started this process,

we're talking to these guys out of the blue. They don't know the team. They don't know me. They don't know anything. So when I say it's me as general manager, it's just whatever that means. It's a nice title. It's awesome. I've got so many people on the staff and kind of behind the scenes that have helped so much,

and I give a lot of credit to actually former Bulldog, Leonard Rogers. Leonard has kind of been a great sounding board for me. You know, hey, what do you think of this guy? What do you think of this guy? Can you play at this level? That sort of thing. But he was kind of our link to Pete. And so he was kind of the one that said, hey, these guys are doing something, you know,

this would be fun for you, this would be good for you and your game, will you hear them out? And so, you know, without kind of that, you know, help from guys like that, from Linderick, this thing doesn't go. So while it's, you know, technically my team, whatever you want to call it, there's so many people that help with this that it wouldn't go if I didn't have guys like that kind of on staff and behind the scenes helping us out. Definitely. Do you want to take a quick moment to kind of maybe give some of those names out?

I know you've been doing that on Twitter as much as you possibly can, but I mean, there's been a ton of people, especially, I believe, the Iowa State Marketing Club. I mean, do you want to just quickly give some shout-outs to some of the great people who have been helping you kind of get this team together? Yeah, kind of like, you know, we'll talk about Vic here in a minute because Vic needs his own. He's so good. He needs his own second or two. You know, just, you know, obviously Jake has been instrumental.

Derek Hanna has been behind the scenes kind of with the, you know, kind of helping. Again, kind of a soundboard, but a great help with some of these guys um because a lot of these drake and iowa state guys have come through the program uh with the cap city league um aaron stendman fahey and will schmitz up at iowa state with the sports marketing they're doing an unbelievable job and we got some stuff they're gonna they're working on right now uh kind of and i'll touch on that um so now that we've got kind of the team rolled out, now kind of what we do is we get kind of into the player focus phase for about the next nine, ten weeks. So one of the things we're doing, the marketing kids are doing up at Iowa State

is now we're going to focus on one player a week where we kind of – the fans can kind of get to know them a little bit. So we're going to start with Peter Jock next week. And, you know, we've got some fun things planned. We'll get to know you cards, like player cards. You know, we've partnered up with a gentleman, Justin, who runs Lightsmith Media, and he's working on videos for these guys, doing highlight reels. They're unbelievable.

They're so cool. You know, we're going to have five fan questions. We're going to, you know, give the fans an opportunity to ask, you know, Pete and all the rest of the guys, you know, what's something you'd like to ask one of our players? Things like that. And then, you know, to kind of integrate the For the Veterans guys, because, you know, that's, you know, the bigger cause that that we you know we wanted to raise awareness for um we're going to have a uh a military focus on probably wednesdays where we talk to a military veteran that went through uh that the for the veterans has helped

out with their programs getting them out for free rounds of golf and stuff like that because i think it's important to you know keep integrating those guys into what we're doing because they are a huge part of what we're doing and their support has been great. And so we want to make sure we do that as well. But, yeah, Aaron and Will have been unbelievable at Iowa State. We can't thank them enough. Yeah. That's awesome.

And, yeah, let's talk a little bit about, you know, Vic. Obviously you have a little bit of a relationship with him. You know him a little bit from the Iowa State group and whatnot he's currently serving I believe as the athletic at the as the athletic trainer for Iowa State today what is he going to bring to that team um and how what is his I mean how involved will he be with this team I know obviously these players want to be able to have fun you know stay fresh stay fit and all that stuff but they also want to be able to return healthy from the tournament and go play and, you know, continue their pro career. So how vital is he to this group?

He's a big part of it. You know, one of the things when we were with the Hilt Magic team the last couple years, you know, and, you know, I brought kind of Vic on with us, you know, like, okay, cool, we need a trainer. We need a professional, you know, trainer for this. Well, the one part you don't think about is in-game stuff. So, you know, we're just sitting out there on the bench, and coach is coaching, and, you know, there's timeouts,

and Vic's flying all over the place. Like, okay, timeout, is that a full, is that a 30? You know, he's like, oh, wow, okay, this guy's amazing. So, you know, Vic does all those little things on the bench that he's seen, you know, with Coach Prohm and everybody else throughout the years. And he's just, he's there helping. You know, hey, Coach, it's a 30-second, hey, it's full time out. You know, just, you know, helping direct traffic a little bit for us.

On top of, you know, just being a great trainer. So, just taking care of those guys. And, you know, that's important to those guys. They want to know, Tyrus was one of them. He was like, you know, those, that's important to those guys. They want to know, um, Tyrus was one of them. He was, he was like, he goes, do we, Hey, do we have a trainer? And I was like, I go, yeah, Vic Miller's going to be with us. Like, he's like, yes, that's my guy. So, um, yeah, so that's an important part of the piece, uh, piece of this too, is that,

you know, not, not only do we have good staff, uh, but you know, you gotta have a good trainer that, you know, if something comes up, we can get it taken care of for these guys. Absolutely. Because these guys are professionals, so, you know, you've got to take care of them. Absolutely. I want to quickly kind of give a shout-out to him. Is he doing this all for free as well? Well, yeah.

I mean, we all are, technically. So, yeah. He comes on board. He just loves basketball. He thought this was a great idea as well. He just likes being around these guys. It's just fun for all of us. volunteering your time and your effort and you know Vic is volunteering his time Jake is volunteering his time and just as all these players are too I mean they're not not necessarily getting paid specifically to go play here so they're doing this because they want to because it's going to be fun because it's for a good cause so I mean I think that's something that people who aren't familiar with the basketball tournament or the Iowa United should probably realize as well absolutely yeah it's uh you know it's great exposure for these guys. But for us as staff, yeah, I mean, we don't win it. There's nothing in it for us. But, I mean, we are raising awareness for a great cause,

and we just love basketball. So it'll be great to watch these guys roll out there and just kind of see what we've all worked on for seven, eight, nine months now just to see it come to fruition. It'll be really cool to watch. Definitely. And I have one other player I want to touch on before we talk about kind of the big announcement that we've been, you know,

talking about a little bit over the last couple of weeks that you've been teasing on Twitter, but Marcus Fizer, we didn't talk about him. I think enough for some of the, you know, big fans out there. He's probably the most famous name on this team, especially for that group who kind of watched college basketball in the state of Iowa from the late 90s into the early 2000s and whatnot, getting drafted by the Chicago Bulls. So Marcus Fives, though, he's 40 years old. What are your expectations for him coming into this tournament? I want to make sure that the people who are listening to this kind of understand the expectations of what he's going to be bringing to this team.

Yeah, you know, Marcus has seen everything. So just having that guidance for, you know, some of our younger guys, especially our post guys. And, you know, I told Nick and Glenn, I go, you know, just being around Marcus for a few days, however long we're together, he's going to be invaluable for you. Nick Bear as well. no you know marcus you know i've had these conversations with him i go hey you know we want to make sure we're doing right by you that you know we're not expecting 40 minutes or you're expecting more than five to ten and so we're on the same page there i know he's working out he's he's getting after it uh you know but hey we're all you know i'm you all my mid-40s.

It's tough. I put on Twitter the other day to have everybody pray for his old joints. I don't blame him. We're just excited to have Marcus on the team. We know he's going to have some value.

Like I said, if he gets it rolling, forget it. He's going to be out there, you know, just like anybody else. If it's not rolling and Nick is playing well, he's all right, you know, ceding to some of these other guys that are playing well. So, you know, it's more of Marcus is – Marcus's value is just being Marcus, and we know that if he gets himself in shape and he's where he needs to be and gets his mind and body right, he could be a huge factor in this.

And that alone is worth the gamble. But, you know, we love having Marcus on the team and how much fun it will be to see him lace it up one more time. So we're excited to have Marcus with us as well. Absolutely. I'm excited to see him. I mean, it's been a long time since I've seen him play pro basketball. You know, a lot of Iowans grow up kind of liking the Bulls, especially around my age, just because of, you know, Michael Jordan and the proximity and whatnot. So to see Marcus Fizer that

go there was pretty awesome, especially being a, you know, playing at one of the big universities in Iowa. So I'm pretty excited to watch him play as well, even if it is just for that five or 10 minutes. I mean, he's a savvy veteran. He's going to be able to do a few things that some of those young guys aren't going to even realize that he could do. I think also he's going to be an interior presence that could be pretty awesome for a few minutes a game, which would be great to see. Yeah, definitely, definitely. So Matt, we've been talking about this, and I want to give you the floor to kind of make the big announcement um you know about the Iowa Hawkeye program and with Nicholas Bayer do you want to just uh let's just go for it yeah absolutely absolutely so this was something I kind of had in mind uh

almost from the beginning uh when we when we started this idea that this would be something that would be a possibility um but yeah so what we've done is we've worked closely with the uh chris street foundation um mike and i've kind of gotten his blessing um but we put it out there to nicholas to see if you know he would have any interest in wearing the number 40 for chris street and he jumped all over it um he's like yeah i'd love to he wants to wear the 40 so um we're going to have uh nicholas bear wear the number 40 and honor chris street uh but more than that with kind of the the street family uh blessing we're going to have a uh jersey of chris's to bring with us uh to whatever region we go to to have on the bench with us so we're excited about that, that we were able to do that.

And we think that's a great thing for kind of the Hawkeye family in the state of Iowa, because Chris meant so much to the state. We thought that was a good way to keep honoring him. I love it. I think that's perfect, especially as you're bringing, like you said, the state together. What an incredible opportunity to kind of continue that memorialization of of chris street and his legacy and i know we talked before you know you know last week and whatnot you know you you remember that that night pretty vividly do you do you want to talk about that at all or um do you want to kind of bypass that i mean well and it was such a you know it was way before social media but it was still such a impactful um you know evening evening a few days right after that. I was just up in Cedar Rapids playing basketball.

So it didn't happen too far away. You can't fathom how big a deal that was back then. You can a little bit in the fact that you see Chris's impact still today with that program. You know, with Jordan doing what he did last year. Incredible. Mints in the free throw so he could keep it. And then Nicholas's excitement just wearing his jersey. I mean, these guys weren't even born when Chris played.

So it says a lot about those two guys, those two Hawkeyes. But it says a lot about Chris Street and who he was. So just that was an important thing that we wanted to kind of keep with us, and we thought that would be a great way for those guys to – or for Nicholas to honor them. And we can't appreciate Mike's help enough. We wanted to make sure we got his blessing on it, and he's been great about it so i love it man i mean i'm really excited to see that and i think nicholas bayer is probably the best representation of what chris street

stood for um you really couldn't have found a better fit for an iowa hawkeye for that yeah and that's you know and that's that's just it you know when you think of nicholas berry you know there's a party that goes that's a lot like chris was you know and so uh he's the perfect guy for it absolutely perfect guy to wear the 40 and so as long as we have this program whether it's this just this year we do this for 10 years um i plan on having a 40 uh worn by a hawkeye in the tournament. I love it. That sounds awesome. I already have a few ideas of players down the line who could potentially probably fit into that.

I do too. A little cryptic there, but I think people could probably guess who we're thinking of. Yes. So you mentioned a little bit about what region you play in, and this will kind of be, I think, part of the wrap-up to this conversation, but what region, do you know when you'll find out what region you'll be in? I think, at least from my perspective, I obviously want to try to get there for some of the games. I think other Iowa fans would love to be able to support you all.

How do you find out the region? When do you kind of get into that? And I think that would be a good segue to also talk about what we can do to help you guys get into the tournament. Sure. We're not sure what region we'll be in we're you know right now we're a little bit looking at memphis now keep in mind this isn't like the ncaa tournament where you know there's a good chance you're playing in you know kansas city or you know chicago there's something you know fairly close to national tournament um where they don't really look at what's you know because you don't really look at what's, you know,

because you don't really have schools necessarily. They're not all alumni teams. So it almost doesn't, you know, they don't really region you like that. So, unfortunately, there's nothing terribly close. Columbus, Ohio again, or, you know, like I said, Memphis is an option. So that's a little bit of a bad break but um it is what it is so but you know one of the things we're going to do is we're going to you know whatever region we go to we'll have a little bit of a mini camp um but we will kind of before then you know while we have the mini camp

is we'll get a hold of the alumni associations you know whatever memphis columbus wherever we go and we'll have kind of a get-together for that area. That's worked pretty well in the past with our Iowa State group when we went to Peoria a couple years ago. So we'll kind of continue that as well. So we'll keep everybody posted. Probably won't know what region yet for a couple months. And, again, this kind of leads into our next thing.

Just because we put this team together does not mean we are in we need fan help with this so it should be up by today or tomorrow probably this weekend let's just say this weekend where you can go to the tournament.com and find our Iowa United team and then support this team is what you put on there. You click on the link to support this team. And again, if we win the whole tournament, they take out $200,000 and give it to the top fans. So it's an easy thing to do to go support us and help us get into the tournament. I'm putting it aside about where we need about 1,500 votes. help us get into the tournament, I'm putting us at about where we need about 1,500 votes.

So go to the site, select our team, support our team, and then if we win, you'd get some cash out of that deal. Pretty easy money right there. Oh, easy money. So that's the best way folks can help us right now is going to the tournament.com and supporting our team that way. I love it. And as far as twitter goes they can follow you on twitter at iowa tbt um it's the iowa united tbt team and the

um the login or the the you know logo is at iowa tbt um they can also follow you on facebook i believe as well correct yeah we do have a fan page there as well um twitter is our main one but we do post everything to facebook too in case you don't have Twitter but yeah stay with us throughout the summer because like I said we're going to have player focuses we're going to kind of touch on every player and get to know them a little bit better on and off the floor things they're involved with off the floor that you maybe didn't know about

that sort of thing so we're going to have plenty of content from here on out great videos highlight reels all sorts of stuff so yeah I love it well Matt thank you for joining the show again today I appreciate it obviously you joined from here on out, great videos, highlight reels, all sorts of stuff. So, yeah. I love it. Well, Matt, thank you for joining the show again today. I appreciate it.

Obviously, you joined us last week as well, so you've been giving us lots of your time to talk about the Iowa United. I'm personally very excited to watch this team. Been talking a lot about it the last two weeks on the podcast and on the website and whatnot. Is there anything else that you want to kind of add before we jump off the show? No, I just want to thank everybody that uh has sent you know just wonderful messages of support um you know in all avenues just what uh they're just people have been just very appreciative and

uh supportive of the group and uh just continue to do so and like i said go vote for us um help us get into the tournament. I love it. Well, thank you, Matt. We really appreciate your time today. All right. Thank you. All right. And that will conclude our special Saturday morning episode.

Again, I appreciate you jumping on the show today and listening to our podcast. I hope you're enjoying some of the great content that we are getting out for you. Expect more of the same. We are starting to get more and more interviewees. We're in the conversation with another recruit with the Iowa Hawkeyes who might be jumping on the podcast here shortly in the next couple weeks to talk about some of the awesome stuff going on in his recruiting life and why he decided to commit to the Iowa Hawkeyes.

We also have Nick Kendall and Sarah Bettinger from Mile High Huddle and from NFL Mocs. That's where Nick Kendall's from Mile High Huddle. Sarah's from NFL Mocs, both draft analysts. We're going to have them on the show to do some superlatives, talk about pro comps, and sort of that kind of thing leading up to the NFL draft that is taking place in two weeks. So we're going to be devoting a full week to that.

So lots of really fun stuff coming up on the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to like and subscribe wherever you downloaded this podcast at. Follow us on Twitter at LockedOnIowa. Follow us on Facebook at LockedOnHawkeyes. And stay tuned again. We have some great episodes coming your way and some promotional items that we are doing with

Kevontae Martin-Manley, so you're not going to want to miss the upcoming episodes. That though, I'm ready to get on with my weekend. I've enjoyed giving you this fantastic podcast episode, but it is the weekend time. It is a beautiful day here in Denver, Colorado, where I live. So I'm ready to get on with my weekend. I've enjoyed giving you this fantastic podcast episode, but it is the weekend time. It is a beautiful day here in Denver, Colorado, where I live. So I'm going to go out and enjoy the day.

Have a great day, Hawkeye Nation. And we'll be you next time. you