Style points? Not in Carver-Hawkeye Arena Thursday night. But a win is a win is a win.
The Hawkeyes shook off a frigid start to the game — especially for everyone not wearing #33 — and cruised to a 55-43 win over Rutgers in Iowa's sixth-straight win in Big Ten play.
Hawkeye guard Lucy Olsen was easily the most effective player on the court Thursday, continuing her recent stretch of torrid play with a game-high 27 points and a team-high three assists.
"Overall, I thought [the defense] was really, really solid," said head coach Jan Jensen, as Iowa gave up its fewest points in a game since holding Purdue to 42 in January 2012. "That's why we're able to stay in games and win games when our offense is struggling."
THE DEEP THREE
1. Lucy'll Ball. Despite coming in as 20-point favorites, Iowa managed just a 28-22 lead at the half — and it can thank Olsen for that much, as she registered 19 of her game-high 27 points in the first half, including all four of her three-point attempts.
Olsen's performance was especially notable because it's hard to call what any other Iowa player did in those first 20 minutes a "performance," as the rest of the Hawkeyes shot just 2-for-19 in the first half, including 0-10 from deep.
"We started a little slow as a team," said Olsen. "I was just trying to do my part to get the energy up a little bit. I thought we figured it out."
Not only did Olsen's 4-for-5 performance from behind the arc match her career high (for the ninth time), it also pushed the star guard's three-point shooting on the year to a downright respectable 33.3%, after struggling through most of the season under 30%.
No one player in college basketball has the ability to turn a team from losing five straight to an even bigger winning streak — to give Olsen singular credit would do a disservice to her coaches and teammates, and she'd likely refuse the credit accordingly.
It's sure fair to say she picked the right time to hit a new gear, though.
After scoring just four points in the loss at Oregon in mid-January, Olsen has averaged 22.8 points, 3.8 rebounds and 5.5 assists in the ensuing six wins. She's making 55% of her shots from the field in that stretch, including 54%(!) from deep.
"She's just really keyed in, really locked in to what we're doing," said assistant coach Abby Stamp. "It takes a while to get used to a system, a league, a changing coaching staff, all those things. Lucy just had that midseason growth area, and man, she's just going full speed ahead right now."
Olsen's never been that kind of sharpshooter in her career, so there's scant reason to expect this hot stretch to be any more sustainable than, say, the cold snap that preceded it. But there is a mental aspect to jump-shooting, and Olsen getting this opportunity to see her shot falling with regularity, this deep into the season, may yet do wonders for her when it's do-or-die time in March.
2. Syd AF. Once the second half rolled around, Iowa did need offense from someone other than Olsen, especially as Rutgers was bound to sell out to stop #33.
Enter Affolter, who was the first Hawkeye other than Olsen to hit a three-pointer in the game when she drained one with 5:23 left in the third quarter... then another, a couple minutes later, to push Iowa's lead back to nine.
Those were the only two triples on the night for Affolter, who finished 2-for-5 from deep — but that was still good enough to push her to 13-for-21 (62%!) from deep in Iowa's win streak.
With the 10-point evening, Affolter is now working on a five-game stretch of 10+ points apiece — and it hasn't come at the expense of her dominance on the boards, as she also contributed a game-high 14 rebounds to register her sixth career double-double and fourth of the season.
Crucially, six of those rebounds came on the offensive glass.
"Sydney's getting so many additional plays," said Stamp. "On a night where you only score [55], those extra possessions make a big, big difference. With the way we shot the ball, we needed every extra possession we could get."
"My mentality is, no matter what the shot is, I'm going to crash [the boards]," said Affolter. "Just hustling after every rebound I can, those second-chance opportunities are so important."
The mind shudders at what Iowa's offense would have looked like Thursday night without Olsen, but Affolter's move back to the 4 has made her just about as invaluable to this team as it engineers a surge up the Big Ten standings.
3. Lock-down, drag-out defense. For as many hot starts as Iowa has managed since moving to small-ball — racing out to first-quarter leads of 9+ points in four of the previous five contests — it was Rutgers, not the Hawkeyes, who staked a 10-2 advantage to lead the game off.
"At the beginning, we were a little flat to start, ourselves," said Jensen. "But a press can slow you down. So then we didn't turn it over, but then it took us a little while to get into our flow. So [the Rutgers press] did its job in that regard, but we were just a little on our heels to start."
From there, though, the game belonged to the Hawkeye defense.
Iowa held the Scarlet Knights to just 33 points over the last 35 minutes of the game, making a comeback not only feasible but borderline difficult to avoid, especially with Olsen playing with invincibility star music running through her head.
Even that stat belies what the Hawkeye defense did down the stretch, though.
Rutgers guard Mya Petticord's three-pointer cut Iowa's lead to a still-precarious 42-37 with 1:06 left in the third quarter, and the nervous energy in Carver-Hawkeye Arena was palpable — to everyone but the Hawkeyes themselves, who wouldn't let Rutgers light up the scoreboard again until the last minute of the game, when Zachara Perkins banked in a three-pointer.
By that point, Iowa's lead was cut to a much, much less precarious 53-40. Officially, the Perkins three-pointer ended an 11-0 Hawkeye run, but "run" seems like an insufficient way to describe holding the other team scoreless for over 10 minutes of court time — an effective shutout quarter of defense.
"Defense is something we can control — our energy and focus — even if our shots aren't falling on the offensive end," said Affolter. "That's something really important we can key in on, and we've done a great job of that the past couple games."
Obviously, Rutgers is not good to begin with, and Iowa's defense may not have put together quite the same superlative performance if RU leading scorer Kiyomi McMillan had been healthy for the game.
For all the advanced stats in the world, though, there's no metric for ifs and buts, and all the wins go in the same column. And as for ice-cold as Iowa's shooting was for most of the game, the Hawkeyes still took care of business.
AND ONE
The fresh five close it out. Iowa's dominant fourth-quarter defense helped push the lead as high as 16 points, good enough to let Jensen put an all-freshman lineup on the floor to finish the game:
- Aaliyah Guyton
- Callie Levin
- Taylor Stremlow
- Teagan Mallegni
- Ava Heiden
Not only was the move a crowd-pleaser for the Carver crowd with just two(!) home games remaining on the season, it was a feel-good finish for what had been an unusually quiet game for the freshmen, who combined for just seven points in 32 minutes of action — Guyton accounting for more than half of each as she anchors herself in the backcourt rotation.
The five members of the 2024 recruiting class might not all start together in their careers, especially with five-star signee Addie Deal looking like she'll step into Iowa City as an instant impact player, but this lineup should be less a novelty and more a competitive five by as soon as next season.
NEXT: Iowa travels to No. 9 Ohio State (21-3, 10-3) for a rare Monday matinee game, as the teams celebrate Presidents' Day with an 11 am tipoff on Fox.
