Iowa women's basketball coach Lisa Bluder was in her old stomping grounds on Wednesday night. Bluder got her start in coaching at St. Ambrose University before moving on to Drake and then Iowa. She's starting to adjust to life without All American Megan Gustafson and discusses how the offense will look very different without her star center in an Iowa uniform.

Q: What has it been like this spring going around the state after your Elite Eight run and the Big Ten Tournament championship?

BLUDER: It’s been fun to share this with everyone. I think everyone got behind our program so much. We broke NCAA records for first and second round attendance, just smashed it. To have so many fans come out and share in that joy with our team and to watch Megan play, I could do that over and over again.

Q: Megan Gustafson’s number will now hang in the rafters. How did that process play out and how involved were you with that?

BLUDER: I am really proud that she will have her jersey retired. In the history of our program, with all the great players that we have had, she is only the second player, shows you how special that is. It really wasn’t that hard to convince Gary Barta. We were on the same page and it really needed to happen sooner rather than later.

Q: How do you replace Megan and the other seniors?

BLUDER: We lose our big three and a lot of our offense. But, we have three incoming freshmen, Kathleen Doyle back, Makenzie Meyer back with a lot of experience. We will be a different looking team for sure, but I think the culture and hard work is still there and I have high expectations for next year.

Q: Has the run you had this year given you a little bounce in recruiting?

BLUDER: I think what it did was give more people an opportunity to see us play on a national level and play at a high level. I think what they saw was the joy that we played with and the chemistry that we had on the floor. That is attractive to a lot of people and I definitely think it has helped.

Q: How different will next year be for an offensive scheme perspective? You were obviously oriented around Gustafson last season and next year it might be more guard oriented.

BLUDER: Absolutely. There’s no doubt that we will be a different looking basketball team, especially on offense. We tried to emphasize our strengths and hide our weaknesses last year. We worked in the double post offense last year and that revolved around a lot of touches for Megan. Now with her gone, we will be more of a four out and one in motion type offense. We have done that offense before and it’s kind of exciting to go back to it again.

Q: What allows you to be so flexible on offense and change things, where others might be married to a certain system?

BLUDER: I think that it’s a problem if you are married to a system. Being at Iowa, you have to get the best players you can and adapt a little bit. I enjoy that process and the scheming part. I have enjoyed in the last three weeks sitting down with my staff and looking at our strengths, what we have to change, and what we have to put an emphasis on this summer.

Q: At what point do you go from kind of basking in the glow of this past season to moving forward when the reality sets in?

BLUDER: I think that reality has set in. Doing these events brings back last year and you celebrate it, but in the office we are facing forward and moving ahead.

Q: What is the plan for the summer with your players?

BLUDER: We get eight hours a week with our players. Four of those hours are on the court and four are in strength and conditioning. We have an excellent strength and conditioning coach and our players really admire and respect her. That is a big part of development this time of year, getting stronger and faster. We want to work on some of the changes to our system, but we also want to work on skill development on the court.

Q: Kate Martin was a player you were really high on coming in last year and then she tore her ACL last summer. Is she going to be ready to go this summer?

BLUDER: I haven’t seen her much since we came back because we weren’t really pushing her much at all since she was out for the season. She will come back in June and she should be good to go. They might be a little conservative with her this summer, but I will leave that up to the trainers and strength coaches. I hope we can get her going full speed because we have our trip to Spain this year. That’s 12 days in Spain and 10 practices leading up to that trip. I would love to have her involved in that.

Q: Do those foreign trips really seem to kind of springboard your team?

BLUDER: Yeah, I really like them because we get extra time to work with our players, which I love. This is a perfect time for us to have this happen. We have a group of players coming in and when you are making changes it’s nice to get them on the floor and get more practice time.