Add in the fact that we had a better RPI, better SOS, and Iowa literally collapsed down the stretch, and I think there's just no reasonable case for putting Iowa in the tourney above us.
Of course there was a "reasonable" (and defensible I would add) case for admitting Iowa ahead of Minnesota in the NCAA tournament.
First of all, as someone else stated, Iowa finished .500 in the conference and had 20 wins during the regular season. Minnesota finished the regular season 18-12 against D1 opponents (which is all that counts for RPI) and had a sub-.500 conference record. The committee would have an easier time justifying taking Iowa over Minnesota than the reverse choice. It should also be mentioned that Minnesota got to play six regular season games against the three worst conference team while Iowa had only four games against them. Minnesota's 19th win was another game against one of those bottom dwellers.
Right now Iowa's RPI is 55 and Minnesota's is 50 according to ESPN. That difference is negligible and not worth considering much. Furthermore, the reason Iowa's RPI and strength of schedule are lower is because Iowa scheduled too many teams in non-conference that it could beat by 30 or 40 whereas Minnesota scheduled more opponents that it could beat by 15 to 20+. Judged by that standard, Minnesota did indeed have a harder non-conference schedule but not a very tough one.
Iowa played Xavier, Notre Dame, Villanova, and Iowa State in nonconference. Notre Dame didn't have a very good season but the other three are in the NCAA tournament. They lost to Villanova in overtime on a neutral court and Iowa State by three on ISU's homecourt. Those teams are second and third seeds respectively. Minnesota played Syracuse, Arkansas, Richmond (away), and Florida State (home). They beat the latter two but one is in the NIT and the other neither made the NCAA or NIT. They had a respectable loss to 3 seed Syracuse but were blown out by NIT bound Arkansas.
The committee obviously doesn't follow a strict RPI ranking in their decisions (nor should they). If that were the case, Toledo and Southern Mississippi would surely be in the NCAA tournament and Kentucky would be a fourth seed instead of an eighth seed.
Finally, Iowa was pretty good for 75% of the season and ranked through most of it but they were pretty bad at the end. Minnesota was never very good at any one point in the season and was never ranked (only twice did they win 2 conference games in a row and three of those games were against Penn State and the other was Purdue). When a team is pretty good for an extended period of time, decision makers believe they have what it takes to beat some good teams in a tournament even if they aren't playing very well at the present time. Minnesota just never really showed that for any extended period of time.
Now, having said all of that, I might agree with you that Iowa didn't deserve to make the tournament. But, I think the teams who should be first in line complaining about that are SMU and, to a lesser degree, Arkansas. I don't think Minnesota should have made the tournament over SMU, and probably not Arkansas, either.
