AMES — Iowa women’s basketball coach Lisa Bluder is rarely afraid to tell things how she sees them. She opened her news conference after
the Hawkeyes’ first loss to Iowa State in six years with some frustration.
“When you don’t shoot free throws, it’s hard to win a game,” Bluder said after Wednesday’s 77-70 setback before a terrific crowd at Hilton Coliseum. “We only shoot six. They shoot 22. I felt like we should’ve been shooting a lot more.
“When you give up 16 (more) free throws to a really good basketball team, it’s hard to win.”
As Bluder sized up the stat sheet, she saw that her two star players — Monika Czinano and Caitlin Clark — were 5-for-5 from the line. The rest of the Iowa team was 0-for-1.
The last time Iowa shot fewer than six free throws in a game? A Nov. 24, 2018 loss to Florida State in which Iowa shot 3-for-4.
“I think we drew a lot of fouls that weren’t called. I thought (Czinano) got beat up like crazy,” Bluder said. “And they have 15 fouls to give with three posts. They were willing to use them. But you’ve got to call them to use them.”
Coaches always want to more foul calls, of course. And they know that foul disparities can sometimes be the plight of road teams in a hostile environment. Iowa State was whistled for 12 fouls to Iowa’s 20.
“It was pretty physical. I thought I got pretty beat up. I thought Monika got a lot of contact as well,” said Clark, who was 10-for-26 from the field. “It’s not anything you don’t see in the Big Ten. It’s something we’re used to.”
The Cyclones (9-1) snapped their five-game series losing streak by being aggressive. They hustled for a lot of early loose balls and finished with a 44-39 rebounding edge, too. Seeing the Hawkeyes (5-2) look a step slow brought up another question.
Is Iowa still feeling the effects of its COVID-19 pause?
First things first, Bluder wasn’t using the Hawkeyes’ positive COVID-19 tests in November — which essentially
shut down team activities for nearly two weeks — as an excuse.
“I’m not going to sit here and say that’s why we lost this game. Does it have an impact when kids have COVID? I think it does,” Bluder said. “I think it’s hard to battle back from that. But Iowa State played great tonight. They played really, really well. So be it.”
But the Hawkeyes obviously weren’t their high-scoring, efficient selves on Wednesday. They shot just 40.6% from the floor and just couldn’t string much together. They made just 6 of 19 shots in the fourth quarter.
Before the pause, Iowa was ranked No. 9 in the country, off to a 4-0 start, averaging 88.3 points per game and outscoring opponents by 30.3 per game.
In the three games since the pause, Iowa is 1-2 with an ugly loss at Duke; one OK half and one great second half against Michigan State; and Wednesday’s loss in Ames.
Bluder said canceling three games — one against Drake and two neutral-site matchups in Cancun — was a bigger loss than just the time off.
“We only had six games coming in here. And you learn
a lot from those games,” Bluder said. “Two of those games would’ve been played away from Carver-Hawkeye Arena, which would’ve been great for us.”
Iowa was can look to last year’s NCAA men’s champion to find a team that found COVID-19 adversity and eventually overcame it.
After Baylor was steamrolling the competition into February of 2021, it had to pause basketball activities and had a full three weeks between games. In the first game back, Baylor struggled to beat last-place Iowa State at home then got beaten soundly at Kansas. The Bears took time to get their legs back, but when they did, they were dynamic.
This is the Rag article.