IOWA CITY — Iowa's top two returning scorers from last season's National Championship Game run, junior forward Hannah Stuelke and senior guard Sydney Affolter, earned the respect of fans and opposing players alike last season with not only high production but high-energy, high-physicality play to boot.

The fact that they did so on two good legs combined, though, makes it all the more remarkable.

Iowa's women's basketball team held its annual Media Day on Thursday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, just nine days after announcing that Affolter had undergone a procedure on her knee and was projected to be out until late November.

"If there's been one thing that's been challenging or a bummer, it's the fact that Sydney and Hannah Stuelke, arguably two of our key components coming back, have never practiced together since we ended our season last April," said head coach Jan Jensen at her press conference.

Affolter's procedure fixed a meniscus problem that had bothered the bruising guard for most of last season, she said. She says she expects to be back in "early to mid-November."

"I haven't played without knee pain in quite some time, so recovery's been going great," Affolter said. "I had previous meniscus surgery in high school, so there was a lot of wear and tear on my knee, and I played with it for a while."

Affolter's style of play is about 20% finesse, 80% chaos — transfer point guard Lucy Olsen flagged her as the most competitive Hawkeye in their offseason practices — and the notion that she was diving on the floor for loose balls and scrapping in the paint with whoever happened to be wearing a different-colored jersey on a sore knee is almost baffling to comprehend.

"It wasn't always super comfortable," Affolter said with a laugh. "I got through it."

Of course, Affolter being sidelined for practice doesn't mean the Hawkeyes' A-team has to run 4-on-5; her absence allows other Hawkeyes to step up — even as they were already doing so with the storied senior class departing.

"More than anything, I've really enjoyed seeing players that haven't really gotten the opportunity in the previous years really step up," said Affolter. "Kylie Feuerbach has been playing great, and I think Taylor McCabe's definitely been stepping up as well."

Jensen also lauded the pair of veteran backcourt weapons for stepping into larger roles without a center of gravity like Clark to orbit around.

"Now [Feuerbach and McCabe] get a shot to take the shot," Jensen said."They get an opportunity to be the one that's the key stopper. They have leaned in beautifully. Kylie is looking great. I'm so proud of her jump."

"[Assistant coach] Abby Stamp has been doing great with all of her guards," said Jensen. "But Kylie has a sense of confidence. Taylor is stealthy with that three again. They have a different level of confidence, and they're competing."

Both Feuerbach and McCabe are expected to start for Iowa's closed-door scrimmage on Sunday against St. Thomas (MN), according to Jeff Linder of The Gazette. Iowa's regular-season opener is slated for November 6 against Northern Illinois.

For Stuelke, who averaged 14 points and 6.6 rebounds a game last season, her procedure addressed an injury that happened at the beginning of the season — the scrimmage against DePaul at Kinnick Stadium.

Not only has Stuelke's knee procedure improved her pain, which is the obvious goal, but it has the added benefit of simply sparing her from the hidden drudgery of in-season injury maintenance.

"[The knee] feels a lot better than last year," Stuelke said. "The extra time in the training room doing all my rehab before and after practice, that was a lot for me, but I did it, and I came out on the other side."

If Affolter's physical style of play sounds tough to do with a sore knee, Stuelke's turn last year as an undersized 5 — who routinely beat everyone down the floor in transition — is borderline incomprehensible.

Stuelke, listed at 6'2", found herself matched up against larger centers with regularity last season, including a run against LSU's Angel Reese, UConn's Aliyah Edwards and South Carolina's Kamilla Cardoso to finish last season's tourney run. All three were summarily selected in the Top 7 of the 2024 WNBA Draft.

"Hannah is a tremendous power forward, and as Hannah showed last year, Hannah is a tremendous center," said Jensen. "Just her ability to be a rim runner, her ability to rebound with authority. There's intangibles that every coach will tell you that just makes you good, and Hannah has got the intangibles with her mindset and the rebound and ability just to really compete."

It does look as if Stuelke — regardless of knee health — will be largely spared the task of guarding the biggest of the bigs again, as 6'4" freshman center Ava Heiden has impressed coaches and almost certainly cemented herself as the starting 5.

"I would say right now, Ava is really starting to separate," said Jensen. "[She] is coming. She's a really nice big player. She's versatile. She's very athletic."

Heiden and Stuelke would not only make one of the fastest rim-running frontcourts in college ball this year, but they've already started meshing in practice now that Stuelke has returned to action.

"I'm excited for Ava, she's been playing really well," said Stuelke. "She's been getting better every day, and she's a really smart kid. Like, she's really smart. So sometimes it feels like I can't teach her anything, but I can."

"I think we play really well together," said Heiden. "Hannah's a great driver too, so whenever I'm on the block and she's in the 4 position, we play really well with each other. She'll dish it to me, or I'll set a screen for her. I think we work really well together, and she's a great teammate too."

All the same, these weeks leading up to the season would be better with both leaders healthy, and it won't be easy for Jensen to not have her first unit together and healthy on a practice floor — which, with Olsen involved, would be for the first time ever — until a week or two into their regular season.

"There comes a point where you have to put a group together, because the way this offense runs, there's a lot that's predicated on the comfortability in the reads," said Jensen.

Once that familiarity's there, though, Stuelke and Affolter are poised to lead a charge back into March Madness — and to finally do it on two good legs.