Kill Bill remains the coolest movie1 I’ve ever seen.
It’s somehow been twenty years since it was released, so for those of you who haven’t partaken in Kill Bill: Uma Thurman is Beatrix Kiddo, an international assassin in the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, trained in the martial arts by the legendary Pai Mei and really good with a sword. She is romantically involved with her boss and mentor, Bill.
While carrying out a hit, she finds out she’s pregnant and leaves her life with the Deadly Vipers behind. She meets another man, and is at the rehearsal when Bill shows up with the rest of the squad, who kill everyone in attendance. Bill shoots Beatrix, and figures she’s dead. She’s not. Beatrix wakes up from a coma and vows revenge, mowing through the entire Deadly Viper squad one by one, until meeting Bill in the climactic final scene. She kills one in a knife fight at a suburban house, another with a black mamba snake hidden in a case of money. It’s carnage, and it’s awesome.
So Iowa got its one seed last night, and it got its bracket, and the NCAA selection committee is not without a sense of humor. If the Hawkeyes are going to make it back to the Final Four, they will have to go through some combination of the following:
No. 4 seed Kansas State, who has already played Iowa twice this year and recorded an early-season win over the Hawkeyes.
No. 5 seed Colorado, who lost to Iowa by 10 in the Sweet 16 last season, and who was the fourth-ranked team in the nation five weeks ago.
No. 12 seed Drake, which is, you know, Drake, and where Lisa Bluder coached for a decade before coming to Iowa City. Iowa already played them this year, too, winning 113-90.
No. 6 seed Louisville, who lost to Iowa in a particularly chippy Elite 8 game last season.
No. 7 seed Creighton, who upset Iowa in the 2022 NCAA Tournament.
No. 3 seed LSU, which defeated Iowa in the National Championship Game last year, then added the best (and chippiest) player from that Louisville team, and is coached by the sport’s premier villain.2
And if Iowa is able to get through that whole group, there’s South Carolina looming, undefeated again and desperate to right their one loss of the last two years.
It’s unquestionably the hardest draw imaginable, not only because the No. 2 seed could be a No. 1 in two other brackets, the No. 3 has perhaps the most talented roster in the nation, the No. 4 has already seen Iowa twice, the No. 5 is a potential national Top 10 team with a run of poor form in late February, and the No. 6 returns a lot from a team that made the final eight just last year.
When I first saw it, I thought it was a revenge flick, a chance for Iowa to right old wrongs and exorcise old demons. But it’s not, at least not until LSU shows up. It’s the reverse of that. This is the hardest draw imaginable because nearly all of these teams have already faced Caitlin Clark, all have some sort of beef with her and this Iowa squad, and all probably had Iowa targeted before the draw was even announced. Iowa isn’t the vengeful bride, because vengeance was already gotten.
The second big fight sequence is against O-Ren Ishii, who had gone on to become the head of the Japanese Yakuza. And so when Beatrix shows up to kill O-Ren, she’s confronted by the Crazy 88, O-Ren’s personal army. First up: Gogo Yubari, O-Ren’s personal bodyguard, who shows up with one of those spiky metal ball on a chain things.
Gogo is a formidable opponent and quite deadly. Gogo almost wins, in fact. But Beatrix has been through plenty of these before, and finds a stick with some nails in it at just the right time. If you want to get really literal about all of this, Gogo is Nebraska, the one-on-one near-death experience before the real fight begins.
Once Nebraska had been dispatched, Iowa thought it might get its final battle — whether that be LSU, South Carolina3, or the whole of women’s college basketball — on equal terms. One vs. one. A proper duel to the death.
And then three years of Iowa storylines, from a college basketball discourse being dominated by Caitlin Clark and her comrades with outward disdain from so many others, showed up all at once on motorcycles with swords. There’s a guy twirling a chain. There’s a guy who throws hatchets. They’re all coming for you, all at the same time. You wanted a fair fight? You thought it was going to be that easy? Silly rabbit. Trix are for kids.
Caitlin Clark, in her black and gold motorcycle suit, kills them all with great style — and tons of blood — before finally getting her shot at the Big Boss.
Last year’s run to the national championship game was as great a thrill as most Iowa fans have ever experienced. The 2023-24 season has been about Clark and the records she has felled, but it’s also been about whether Iowa can duplicate that feat with a lesser roster but a greater Clark. What became clear Sunday evening was that, if Iowa is going to do it again and get their battle with the boss, they’re going to have to fend off all of their former enemies once again. The motorcycles are revving, the Crazy 88 are at the door, and any one of them has the capacity to end the movie early.
Two movies, technically, but especially the first one.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s also UCLA, which has no real issue with Iowa from recent years, but which also could well have been a top seed had they not lost in double overtime to USC in the Pac-12 tournament.
I suppose O-Ren is LSU and Bill is South Carolina? Five finger death punch to the Gamecocks?
This column was a ton of fun, Patrick! Two of my favorite things - Tarantino films and Iowa women's basketball. Great metaphor.