The old saying goes that when your jumper's not falling, find another way to impact the game.
After the defensive show the Hawkeyes put on Sunday, it's safe to say few will be talking about their 2-17 performance from behind the arc.
"The coolest part is that they've found a different way to win," said Jan Jensen, now 6-0 in her head coaching career. "And that is with their defense. And they are believing in it."
Iowa smothered the visiting Washington State Cougars in a 72-41 victory at Carver-Hawkeye Arena Sunday, led by 17 points by Lucy Olsen. The win included a 37-9 stretch of basketball between the second and third quarters, effectively holding WSU to single-digits over a "half" of basketball.
THE DEEP THREE
1. Lucy in the mid-range with diamonds. Coming into the season, every Hawkeye who had the opportunity to practice with — and against — transfer guard Lucy Olsen mentioned her lethal mid-range jumper.
They must be delighted to see other teams victimized by it now.
It's early in a long season, of course, but Olsen has lived up to every ounce of the preseason hype, finishing with a team-high 17 points on 7-for-15 shooting on Sunday. That included 6-for-11 from inside the arc, and the first five of those makes were, yes, mid-range jumpers.
"I like the mid-range a lot," said Olsen. "It's hard to guard and a lot of teams don't face it. So it's open a lot of times, and today it was open a lot."
The downside of Olsen's scoring coming so heavily in the mid-range is that after a three-pointer on Olsen's first shot of the game, neither she nor any other Hawkeye hit a three-pointer until Jada Gyamfi banked one home in the gloaming, bringing Iowa's three-point shooting on the day to a dismal 2-for-17, where it would end; Olsen finished 1-for-4, her percentage dipping back below 30% on the season.
"My three-ball is...," said Olsen, trailing off and rolling her eyes for comedic effect. "I shot well last game, but it went back down, unfortunately."
With only 17 attempts from deep to Iowa's 52 inside the arc, the long-range frigidity only had a limited effect on Iowa's effectiveness on offense, and 18 offensive rebounds helped warm that frostbite as well. Those are excellent signs for as long as the team's jump-shooting stays cold.
But Jensen has a warning for teams who think this early cold spell has a more glacial tinge to it. "I think if someone does sag it might help us, so go ahead," she said.
2. The Taylor Stremlow Show. True freshman Taylor Stremlow is averaging three points per game. And through six games, she just might be the most natural showperson in an Iowa uniform — in any major sport — since you-know-who.
"When I feel like we're in a little drought, the time is right and the fast break is usually flowing, throwing a little cool pass in there definitely helps the crowd get loud," said Stremlow. "Which then helps us get hyped up, and we get stops."
Sure enough, the energetic trio of freshmen in the rotation — Stremlow, Teagan Mallegni and Ava Heiden — sparked Iowa's monstrous defensive performance, including a trio of blocks from Heiden in eight minutes. That foot on the team's gas pedal earned Stremlow 20 minutes off the bench Sunday as Iowa kept the clamps on Wazzu defensively in the second half.
"We contested the threes a lot better in those second and third quarters," said Stremlow. "We obviously gave up a lot fewer points, so I think that was a big difference."
"That second quarter, [the freshmen] kind of gave us the spark, so we kept going with it," said Jensen. "And then when we came in [for halftime], just the feel you get, I was pretty confident in the second half."
Stremlow is an easy player to be confident in.
For the second time in her six-game career, Stremlow logged at least one of each major stat category Sunday: five points, six rebounds, two assists, a block and a steal. And, in the interest of completionism, two fouls and two turnovers. Not that the staff cares all that much about those in tune-up games.
"I think Stremlow makes things happen," said Jensen. "If she makes a mistake, she's still gonna make things happen. She just kind of auto-corrects and has a high-five block and she almost saves it."
But like the other stat-sheet fillers that have prowled the parquet at Carver-Hawkeye of late, the numbers do not come close to doing justice to the brand of productive chaos Stremlow brings to the floor, utterly belying her true-freshman status (again, like her fellow freshmen).
"Obviously, you're put in the game for a reason, and that's the mindset that I'm trying to have," said Stremlow. "Just to bring energy. Defense is what brings that energy, so I think just making good plays, do the right thing, but still have fun, put on a show and get the crowd going helps."
Indeed, on a team that's still seeing shakiness show up in the stat sheets with lines like 2-for-17 from deep, Stremlow and her fellow freshmen's fearless, frenetic flash and fire are, almost paradoxically, a source of steadiness.
"It's helpful that we have been playing pretty good defense, because our offense isn't exactly where we want it to be yet," said Olsen. "I think we have a lot of potential to get better, but we're still winning so a lot of that comes from the defensive end."
"The beauty of this team is, they want it so much that they get tighter," said Jensen. "I'm trying to figure out ways to keep them loose, having fun."
It doesn't take a culinary scientist to know that Step 1 of that particular recipe is "add Taylor Stremlow," and she'll take care of the stirring herself.
Stremlow's mad villainy comes with a direct impact not only on her own stat sheet, but Iowa's control of the game. Four of her season-high six rebounds came on the offensive glass Sunday, and three* of those four were converted into second-chance layups.
*the fourth offensive rebound resulted in, sure enough, a missed layup.
"There's someone new every night who does what we need to do to break things open," said Jensen.
3. #MODIFIEDSINGLEDIGITWARNING. It's important to note that Washington State led this game after the first quarter, 19-18. That quarter featured the Cougars going 3-for-5 from deep and 8-for-13 as a whole, for 62% shooting; only seven turnovers kept the Wazzu offense in check, it seemed.
"We gave up 19 points, and we were like, 'all right, that's way too many'," said Olsen. "'It's time to lock in defensively.'"
"I did not want [WSU] to get hot," said Jensen. "So we just had a little 'chat' about sticking to our fundamentals and wanting to dictate the action. And I think they responded pretty well to that."
A Hawkeye response is quite a thing, it appears, as Iowa held the Cougars to nine points on 4-34 shooting over the next 20 minutes, turning that one-point deficit into a 55-28 lead with 10 minutes of chips-and-salsa time on the docket.
By the time the dust settled and Addison O'Grady hit a jumper to push Iowa's lead to 33, Iowa had put the finishing touches on a 43-9 run that saw as many turnovers as points for the Cougars, who were held to a season-low in the loss.
"I think we have people who are pretty good on the ball [defensively]," said Jensen. "They're pretty good whether we going to go to the ball screens or under. They understand the sense of urgency. ... It's allowing us to put our best people in positions I like."
"Pretty good" seems to work pretty well, as Washington State's offense ground to a halt in every phase of the game. The Cougars were ice-cold from deep, often in out-of-rhythm iso shots — pressing — and Iowa improved defensive leveraging and rebounding kept the Cougars from ever getting in an offensive rhythm once the second quarter began.
"In our huddles, we talked about that we have to play defense more, and that'll get our offense going," said Olsen. "And then we also got some energy off the bench, and that helped us get our offense going."
Iowa's monstrous defensive performance also kept Washington State out of reach for just about the entire second half. That foregoing of the conclusion meant Jensen could work with new rotations in competitive action, ones that — thanks to the mid-winter arrival of Olsen and knee surgery recoveries for four players, including starters Stuelke and Affolter — have had precious little practice time to gel first.
"It might not have always been fluid or smooth, but we were trying different combinations [on the floor]," said Jensen. "The climb gets steeper and steeper, and we need to see who's going to be able to play multiple positions and who complements who well. So today we learned a lot. It might not have always looked like it, as fluid offensively, but I've got to believe that pretty soon those shots will be falling."
Few in basketball understand the process of progress better than Jensen, and if Iowa's outside shooting rewards her faith by the meat of this nightmarish Big Ten schedule, then only the basketball gods know how far this team can, well, march. Just about every other main component of a strong tourney team — defense, ball movement, athleticism and depth, for starters — is there, and it's there now.
The Iowa women are now off to Cancun, Mexico, where they'll face Rhode Island on Thanksgiving Day in the Cancun Classic, followed by BYU on Friday. The game against the Rams tips off Thursday at 5:30 PM CST, and is being streamed on FloCollege.com (subscription required, unfortunately), as is Friday's contest.
