IOWA CITY — It sure felt like a football Saturday at Kinnick Stadium: packed stands, the Hawkeye marching band performing at halftime, the Wave, and so many other familiar comforts. All this was on a Sunday, though.
Oh, and there was a basketball court on the north side of the field.
55,646 raucous Hawkeye fans crowded into Kinnick Stadium Sunday to watch the Iowa women's basketball team defeat DePaul, 94-72, in an exhibition game that set a record for the largest women's basketball crowd.
"Getting to play at Kinnick, it was like a dream," Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder said after the game Sunday. "You have an idea, and it could fall flat if nobody shows up, but man, Hawk fans showed up today."
"I thought we had some good basketball in there too," Bluder added.
Indeed, star senior guard Caitlin Clark led the Hawkeyes with 34 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists* on the custom Kinnick hardwood.
*The Big Ten Network helpfully noted that this was the first triple-double in Kinnick Stadium history.
"Our team was kind of giddy getting ready to walk down the [Kinnick] tunnel," Clark said. "It's the same coming down the Carver tunnel, but this is a different thing we've never experienced."
Credit for the event goes first and foremost to Bluder, who approached Iowa administration with the idea in April, after the Hawkeye Final Four run generated new heights of fan support.
"We had that celebration on Friday night to celebrate our team, and 9,000 people came out for that," Bluder said. "They're coming out just to see the team and celebrate the success. So I thought, what could we do? We had sold out Carver already, what were the possibilities? Obviously [Iowa] wrestling did this five years ago, it was a great success. So why not try it?"
"Actually, Coach Bluder kept this [event] a pretty decent secret from me," Clark said when asked when she found out about the event. "But I think I knew before the rest of the team, and I was like, 'oh yeah, we're doing this.' Just a great idea by Coach Bluder, and obviously the administration, Beth got behind it."
Of course, Bluder's far from the first or last coach to have a big promotional idea for their program. Sunday's record-setting spectacle was the result of mountains of support generated by Clark and the Hawkeyes, as well as rising respect for women's basketball and women's sports in general.
"Caitlin sells a lot of tickets, there's no doubt about that," Bluder said. "But I also think it was, [fans] want to be a part of history. Hawk fans are special. You set a goal for Hawk fans, and they're going to come through for you. Everybody wanted to part of something special, see something they'd never seen before, and have the first opportunity to see this team play this year."
On an even deeper level, women's basketball is just in the roots, both at Iowa and in Iowa.
The late Dr. Christine Grant, Iowa's women's athletic director from 1973 to 2000, championed women's sports at a time when Title IX was just finding its footing in collegiate athletics, and girls' basketball dates back more than a century in the state with the first tournament played in 1920.
Bluder and Clark both have deep connections to the state of Iowa, too. Bluder graduated from Linn-Mar High School and played in college at UNI. Her entire coaching career has been in Iowa as well, starting at NAIA St. Ambrose before going to Drake and then finally landing in Iowa City 23 years ago. Clark, an Iowa native, has spent her entire playing career within the state, first at Dowling Catholic in West Des Moines and now at Iowa.
So there was some real history behind Bluder's statement at midcourt after the game ended, when she told the cheering crowd that "nowhere in the country could this happen except for at the University of Iowa." Some fan bases may take some exception to a statement like that, but regardless of where it could happen, it's no surprise that it did happen at Iowa.
At Iowa's media day two weeks ago, Clark predicted a couple of wind-aided airballs, and true to form, she delivered — even missing iron on a free throw en route to a 5-10 performance at the line.
"It was a little windy — the cold was perfectly fine," Clark said after the game. "I promise I'll never airball a free throw again; the wind took it on that one."
There is a reason why basketball's almost exclusively an indoor sport; neither team made 30% of their three-pointers, with many misses lucky to draw iron. Even at the charity stripe, the Hawkeyes made just 53% of their free-throw attempts, with DePaul scarcely better at 65%.
Not that anyone cared all that much about the shooting.
"You're playing outside, there was a few airballs, free throws weren't as good, our three-point percentage wasn't as good as normal — I really don't care," Bluder said. "That's just such a minor point of this to me."
After all, Sunday's game was an exhibition — but it was also a celebration. The Crossover at Kinnick was an opportunity to honor the Hawkeye women for their run to the Championship Game last season, to make a statement for the program and sport, and — perhaps most importantly — to raise money for the UI Children's Hospital, as interim athletic director Beth Goetz presented a $250,000 check to the UICH after the stadium participated in The Wave after the first quarter.
Bluder has had a front-row seat to an incredible evolution of the sport during her career, especially with fan support, and that fact was not lost on her on Sunday.
"When I walked out it was amazing, and also when I was sitting at timeouts and could see the South End Zone," Bluder said. "The North End Zone is one thing, but those people can't even see the court. They're watching on the Jumbotron but they just want to be a part of it. That just makes our players feel so special."
The fans at Kinnick were loud, too. Clark's first three-pointer didn't come until the 5:53 mark of the second quarter, but the resultant cheer was louder than some Hawkeye touchdowns have shaken out of the stadium. The four-corner I-O-W-A chant started the fourth quarter... and lasted for several minutes of game time, long after the cheerleaders stopped waving the letter flags, merely pausing for a media timeout and Jumbotron advertisements before starting back up again.
If there was any doubt left about the noise that the renovated North End Zone is capable of creating, Sunday's chants laid that to rest.
"That chant went on forever, and I could not communicate with our team during it, but I loved it," Bluder said. "It was so much fun, I think I lost focus and the team lost focus during it, but: go for it."
"I was like, 'I can't hear or think right now,' it was so loud and they didn't stop," Clark said. "It just shows how invested our fans are into the game. They're paying attention to the game, they love it and support it, and we're really lucky to have that. Nowhere else in the country has what we have."
The chants coincided with a DePaul run, as the Blue Demons scored the first 15 points of the fourth quarter. A Hawkeye lead that had been as high as 28 points in the third quarter was down to 11, and there was, rather briefly, one more veneer of uncertainty to the outcome.
The Hawkeyes slammed the door shut in the final minutes though, pushing the lead back to 23 before a DePaul free throw gave the game its final margin.
But this was an exhibition. The numbers on the scoreboard and on the stat sheet only meant so much. Not next to 55,646 — and $250,000.
