COLUMN: Former Panthers doing great things

   The last couple of issues, Express sports editor Pete Temple has covered a couple of former Panther basketball players as their college careers come to an end.

     And last year he ran a series of articles as well on former Panthers and how their college careers were going. I really enjoyed reading those and heard quite a few comments from our readers about those stories.

     While looking through my Facebook feed this week I started seeing some Iowa track mentions of the Big Ten indoor track and field meet and saw that former Panther Michael Melchert had a decent meet.

     Melchert ran 8^th in the mile and I saw former Panther Matt Manternach finished 7^th in the 800. But what really caught my attention was a posted video of Melchert running the final leg of the Distance Medley Relay.

     On the backstretch, Melchert came out of nowhere to pass five other runners to help his relay take first place honors. On turn three he shot into third place and on the final turn, he moved up to second and flat out sprinted past a runner from Indiana to pull his team into victory lane.

     What an exciting finish to a great team effort.

     Chris Street record. By now most of the Hawkeye faithful and those around the nation have seen a very unselfish feat take place Sunday during the Hawkeye-Northwestern basketball game.

     Hawkeye guard Jordan Bohannon stood at the free throw line with the Hawks holding onto a precarious 8-point lead with under a couple of minutes to play. Minutes earlier he had just made a free throw that tied legendary Hawkeye Chris Street’s record for consecutive free throws made.

     Street died in a tragic car accident right in the middle of his record streak.

     So when Bohannon stepped up to the line to break the record, he purposely clanked one off the rim, thus keeping Street’s name in the record book.

     Afterward Bohannon confirmed the intentional miss and showed the nation that some things are just bigger than a basketball game.

     Fortunately for the Hawks, they got the ball right back and Bohannon started a new streak by knocking down two more shots at the charity stripe to finish out the Wildcats with his 25-point effort.

     Note: In watching the missed free throw replay, I see coach McCaffery had his back to the moment as he was addressing the bench. He quickly looked back towards the hoop just as the ball clanked off the rim. Nice job Jordan!