On Saturday, the sixth-seeded Iowa women will tipoff against 11-seed Murray State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at 11 AM CT in Norman, Oklahoma.
After back-to-back runs to the National Championship game and six-straight appearances in the national tournament (which would have been seven if the 2019-20 tournament hadn't been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic), the big stage isn't unfamiliar territory for the Hawkeyes.
But this year is quite different.
After the trio of Caitlin Clark, Kate Martin and Gabbie Marshall moved on and Lisa Bluder traded in her spot on the sideline for a seat in the VIP section, the Hawkeyes enter the postseason as a six seed without home court advantage in the first two rounds and with no Big Ten Tournament Championship trophy.
And that's just the start.
The Hawkeyes' new head coach Jan Jensen, new leading scorer Lucy Olsen and new leaders like Sydney Affolter are experiencing things they either haven't in a long time, or never have before.
"With everything that we lost, with everything that these players had to manage. It's one thing when you talk about it -- like it's one thing when we all started it, but it's another thing to go through it," Jensen said on Selection Sunday. "When you're going through it and you're trying to lead, you're trying to be a transfer coming in like Lucy, you're trying to be the kids that have been role players, yet started, but now be the ones. I mean, managing that and then all the expectations is hard."
After falling short of the Big Ten Tournament title game for the first time in four years, the Iowa women had to clear yet another hurdle that took some adjusting for the post-Clark era Hawkeyes.
Following the quarterfinals loss to Ohio State, Iowa returned to campus and received some much needed rest. Prior to the matchup with Murray State, Iowa will have gone just over two weeks without playing in a competitive basketball game.
"It's weird, especially because the weather was getting warmer. It didn't really feel like basketball season anymore," Villanova transfer Olsen said. "Two weeks is a long time, but our bodies are fresh, so that's exciting."
"I feel like we haven't played a game in quite a while, but I think we do a great job of competing at a high level and practice every day and pushing each other to be at our best," Affolter added. "So I don't think that's a problem."
Along with the period of rejuvenation, the Hawkeyes practiced without a definite opponent in the foreseeable future last week.
"It kind of felt like preseason again," Olsen said. "We weren't preparing for a specific team, we were working on ourselves a little bit more, because it's hard to when you have back-to-back games, you can't really focus on yourself too much. You've got to prepare for the next game. But yeah, it's been a lot of playing and just refreshing that chemistry again and just playing with each other."
So what have the ladies worked on in the meantime?
"I was working a little bit on our zone," Jensen shared. "We gave up some rebounds on our zone shifts and we tried to help with some drives in our zone shifts, which left open pocket corner pocket threes. So I tried to work on that a little bit more, although it's been really good for us -- we beat Michigan State, I think because of it and we held serve most of the time against Ohio State. So I did that a little bit."
The Hawkeyes also did some work on the offensive side of the ball.
"I was tweaking some things with some ball screens on our player," Jensen said. "I was trying to work on some fluidity in our offense -- just giving a little bit more time with different combinations. I spent a lot of time working with different people when we need different rhythms in a game."
Now that the time has come to prepare for the Racers, the last few days were significantly more intense for Jensen and her staff.
"I do know that regardless of what role there's not a lot of sleep involved and you're very happy about that," Jensen smiled. "There will be pressure to try to make sure that we're through the right scouting and all the things. But I got a heck of a staff and they deserve so much credit for helping and sticking with me and choosing to work with me and keeping the thing rolling."
Would it be nice for Iowa's circumstances to be similar to the last two years? Surely. But with a new leader, new faces in new roles and a new playing location roughly ten hours south, the mission remains the same.
""It would have been fabulous had we could have hosted and yep, we can all go back and they would have could have should have, but I like to look at and see, 'Wow, look what they did,' Jensen said. "So I'm -- I'm just really, really thrilled and thankful that we are here."
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