Iowa Suffers The Biggest College Basketball Upset In Several Decades

The Iowa Hawkeyes managed to get embarrassed Wednesday against Eastern Illinois.

The Hawkeyes, a team ranked in the AP Top 25 back in November, dropped the game to the Panthers 92-83, despite being favored by more than 30 points. How humiliating was the loss? Sports books believe it's the worst upset in at least three decades.

For comparison, UMBC was a 20.5 underdog against Virginia in March Madness back in 2018. The Cavaliers lost that game and became the first one-seed in tournament history to lose to a 16-seed.

However, on just the spread, that loss is substantially less embarrassing than Iowa's to EIU.

Iowa's loss to Eastern Illinois is worse on the spread than UVA losing to UMBC. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)

Iowa has been on a rough skid.

Despite entering the season with reasonably high expectations, the Hawkeyes have been stumbling recently.

Fran McCaffery and the Hawkeyes are just 3-4 over the team's last seven games. The team isn't just losing, but it's happening in very embarrassing fashion. McCaffery had a full-blown meltdown during an overtime loss to Wisconsin.

Now, just two games later, he followed that up by losing to EIU.

The really bad news for Iowa is the team only has Big Ten conference games left. The cupcakes are done and the Hawkeyes were hoping to have a much better record than 8-4 once all the non-conference games were over.

Iowa lost to Eastern Illinois. (Photo by Matthew Holst/Getty Images)

It's definitely not time to panic, but it's certainly time to start getting worried. The season is at serious risk of going off the rails. If Iowa drops several more games in the near future, fans should absolutely start getting very nervous about making the NCAA Tournament.