By Susan Harman

IOWA CITY, Iowa – If misery loves company, and we’re always told it does, the Iowa women’s basketball team has only to look to their Big Ten brethren.

Iowa’s 65-58 loss at home to Kansas State was just one of several losses suffered by Big Ten teams in the first two weeks of the season. Here’s a sample of the conference’s stumbling start:

*Then No. 7 Ohio State lost to then-No. 21 USC 83-74 on a neutral court in Las Vegas;

*No. 23 Illinois lost at Marquette, 71-67 and to Notre Dame, 79-68, on a neutral court;

*No. 14 Maryland was manhandled at then-No. 6 South Carolina (114-76) and at UConn 80-48;

*No. 9 Indiana was embarrassed 96-64 at No. 15 Stanford.

These were predicted to be the elite teams in the Big Ten and were ranked accordingly in preseason polls. The league should be given credit for playing these kinds of non-conference opponents and, in Iowa’s instance, defeating a top-10 team in Virginia Tech.

But it’s tough out there. Everybody is loaded for bear and the skins are piling up. Purdue, a likely middle-of-the-pack Big Ten team was swamped 92-49 at UCLA. Poor Minnesota plays host to UConn and its star Paige Bueckers, a Minnesota native, on Sunday. Nebraska also plays host to Creighton Sunday.

Clearly some of the initial rankings were overly generous in some cases, which is no surprise given the turnover in college basketball. It’s difficult enough to rank these teams but when you have no idea what impact newcomers are going to have it’s a crap shoot. Defending champion and then-No. 1 LSU lost right out of the gates to Colorado. UConn was drubbed by South Carolina and Notre Dame was blasted in Paris by the Gamecocks. Princeton nearly upset UCLA.

This is good for the game but tough on coaches and fans.

Some good non-conference games are yet to come, but the point is that the Big Ten will have plenty of company when it claims its teams are the best in the land.

*Bulldogs inbound.  Sunday’s game against Drake tips at 6 p.m. in Carver-Hawkeye Arena. The Bulldogs are coming in off a big 85-73 victory over Iowa State. Drake (3-0) built a sizable lead but saw ISU rally in the third quarter before the Bulldogs pulled away again.

Drake was picked to be the Missouri Valley Conference runner-up this season.

Last season Iowa escaped with a 92-86 victory in overtime at the Knapp Center. Monika Czinano led the way with 36 points and 11 rebounds. Caitlin Clark added 28 points and nine assists. Drake had five players score in double figures in that game.

Drake is led by four players averaging at least 10 points: forward Grace Berg (19.0), point guard Katie Dinnebier (17.0), guard Taylor McAulay (16.0) and guard Anna Brown (10.3). Drake’s top scorers are also excellent 3-point shooters (team is shooting .407 from three) and will spread the floor and share the ball. The Bulldogs are averaging 85.7 points per game and holding opponents to 69.3.

“Grace Berg, she’s been around, what, six years now?” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder joked. “(She) is someone we know pretty well. Experienced post player, agile, athletic, very different from (K-State’s) Ayoka Lee. I know that they had a really good shooting performance from one of their players (McAulay) that typically hadn’t. I haven’t seen them (as of Wednesday) but obviously any time you beat Iowa State it’s going to really open up everybody’s eyes to how good this team is.”

This game is not likely to resemble the Kansas State slog.