Iowa 94, LSU 87: Catharsis
ALBANY — A year's worth of frustration, erased in 40 minutes of incredible, cathartic basketball.
Caitlin Clark scored 41 points with seven rebounds, 12 assists, two steals and a block as 1-seed Iowa exorcised a year's worth of demons, thumping 3-seed LSU 94-87 and punching its ticket to a second-straight Final Four.
Kate Martin added 21 points, with 16 from Sydney Affolter, as Iowa ran its lead as high as 14 points in the last minute of the fourth quarter.
LSU forward Angel Reese dominated in the early going and finished with 17 points and 20 rebounds, but she was hampered after turning her ankle in the first half and ended up fouling out late in the fourth quarter.
"It's amazing to be back in the Final Four," Clark said. "It's so hard to get there, especially with this region and how loaded this region was. We told ourselves we're the 1-seed for a reason. We've earned this. We deserve to be in these moments. We're prepared for these moments."
Iowa will face UConn in the Final Four on Friday night, at approximately 8:30 PM CT on ESPN.
The Deep Three
1. Nobody could guard Caitlin Clark. For all of LSU's dominant size and athleticism in the middle to matter, the backcourt had to do one thing: slow down Caitlin Clark.
Instead, Clark ran the Tigers out of the gym.
Clark hit her first three-pointer of the ballgame, en route to tying her career-high with nine threes, many of which came in Hailey Van Lith's face. Van Lith, who enjoyed her own rise to stardom at Louisville before transferring to LSU last season, was helpless against Clark in open space — and everyone on the court knew it.
"There's not a whole lot you can do about some of the threes she hit," said Van Lith, who wil probably see Clark in her nightmares after getting torched by Iowa's superstar in a second consecutive NCAA tournament.
Van Lith's backup, Last-Tear Poa, was LSU's only backcourt substitute of the day. While Poa was at least capable of keeping Clark in front of her, she picked up two fouls of her own in the first quarter and only played nine minutes the rest of the way. She still finished as a +9 in plus-minus; Van Lith was a game-worst -15.
While Iowa's triumph over LSU lends itself to overreaching takes about the "validity" of transfer-heavy roster-building vs. Iowa's uncommon retention of talent — let's remember how many Hawkeye fans were clamoring for LSU forward Aneesah Morrow (14 points, 14 rebounds Monday) to take her talents to Iowa City from DePaul during the offseason — it was clear that Iowa was the better-prepared team for the Elite Eight battle, up and down the rotation.
Of course, it helps when the top of the rotation is Clark and Gabbie Marshall, who both played all 40 minutes in the win. Marshall's offensive counting stats were, on paper, pedestrian: three points, four rebounds, two assists.
"Gabbie — she's probably not going to get enough credit, but did you see her tonight?" Jensen said. "Just a dog. Locked in."
Marshall added two steals and a block on the defensive end Monday, after being a surprise final player in the team's pregame introductions. As per usual for the season, she was also an emotional leader for the crowd and team in her 40 minutes of action.
"I wanted this [win] so bad," Marshall said. "I kept telling everyone today that I've never wanted to win a game more in my career. And when I'm locked in, I'm locked in."
Marshall's tenacious defense disrupted the LSU offense, to the extent that if it weren't for the Tigers' preposterous 23 offensive rebounds, this could have been a blowout in Iowa's favor.
It still kind of was a blowout; LSU only got the game down to six points once in the last 15 minutes of action, and it was clear watching Clark demolish Van Lith that Iowa was simply not going to lose this game.
"We prepared for this game," Clark said. "We focus on Iowa, we do what Iowa does, and we'll come out on top. That was Coach Bluder's message: it's not about last year. You worry too much about the past, you're going to get caught up in that. It's about being present, being where your feet are. Don't worry about being in the Final Four, be in this moment, be in the Elite 8, enjoy that and soak that in. That's what's going to allow you to win 40 minutes, and that's exactly what we did."
2. Nothing's tougher than a punching bag. Last year, backup center Addison O'Grady walked into elevated minutes in the Final Four, defending reigning Player of the Year and future #1 WNBA draft pick Aliyah Boston as Iowa pulled the shocking upset that vaulted this program into the stratosphere.
Monday's game might have topped that.
With starting post Hannah Stuelke hampered by foul trouble — and Reese's superior length — O'Grady stepped in and played the game of her life on the defensive end. Reese, almost certainly a first-round pick in the WNBA Draft if she chooses to leave, started the game 5-for-7 from the field and looked every bit as much of a mismatch as Clark. By the time LSU pushed its early lead to 34-26, a mere 20 seconds into the second quarter, Reese already had a stat line of 10 points, six rebounds, three assists and a pair of steals.
With 8:01 left in the first half, though, Reese fell into the camera pool under the basket after fouling Stuelke and immediately hobbled off the court, initially putting no weight on an ankle she later said had been bothering her for a while.
"I did roll my ankle on one of the cameras," Reese said. "I'm tough, so I tried to play through it, of course, and this is something that has been going on for a little while now. But I played through it, and I'm not going to make that excuse for the rest of my play for the game."
"Obviously you never want to see an opponent go down, you never want to see somebody get injured," Martin said. "I don't know if it affected her or not. She came back in the game, and she played pretty well."
LSU head coach Kim Mulkey also refrained from attributing the loss to Reese's aching ankle.
Reese continued her dominance on the glass after coming back, finishing with 10 offensive rebounds, but she went 1-for-10 from the field in the second half, with O'Grady playing 11 of those minutes.
"Using my length, really, trying to bother [Reese] with that." O'Grady said. "Trying to push her off the block, make her uncomfortable, make her shoot the mid-range shot that she doesn't want to shoot."
O'Grady had every excuse to pack it in after a miserable start to the season — she fell down the rotation early on, and Wright Thompson described O'Grady as Clark's "punching bag" at an Iowa practice.
Here's the thing about punching bags, though: they're the most resilient pieces of equipment in the gym. Monday night, O'Grady's resilience shone through. She even got a standing ovation from the Hawkeye crowd after being subbed out in the second half.
"I'd stop [Reese] on defense, that means we get another possession, that we get the chance to score. It was just really fun."
O'Grady attributed her battle with Boston last season as a key factor in her minutes tonight.
"Last year really gave me the confidence to be able to do that again this year," O'Grady said. "Obviously it's a hard position to be in [guarding elite posts], but I'm just really excited and proud of what our team could do, and that I could help in any way that I could."
There's little respite awaiting O'Grady in Cleveland, though; UConn center Aaliyah Edwards and South Carolina's 6'7" Kamilla Cardoso are both also projected as first-round picks in the upcoming WNBA Draft — and both might go even higher than Reese.
And to someone without O'Grady's experience, that task might be intimidating.
3. Iowa earned it by playing 40 minutes of intense basketball. The Hawkeyes' win was hardly a sure thing, especially while Reese was working with two solid wheels. LSU had taken the aforementioned 34-26 lead thanks to a 13-0 run, and the Tigers' last three buckets of the first quarter all came off Iowa turnovers. After LSU avalanched Iowa in the first half of last season's championship game, it was fair to wonder whether the big-game script had actually changed at all.
The one LSU partisan who didn't like the frenetic first quarter? Kim Mulkey.
"In talking to my team, we played to their pace," Mulkey said. "We ended the first quarter with the lead, but I think their pace dictated that third quarter. I think it really hit us in the third quarter, that pace."
Indeed, the scoreboard lurched in Iowa's favor in the decisive third frame, with the Hawkeyes opening up a lead of as many as 13 points, but LSU's offense was already showing signs of trouble in the second quarter when the Tigers shot 5-for-18 as their lead evaporated.
The Hawkeyes smelled blood.
"Coach Bluder has us get up and down [the court] all the time in practice," Marshall said. "We're always practicing our transition and scoring quickly. I think that speaks to why we're not tired in games. I mean we're tired, but we're gonna keep running, gonna keep running, until the final buzzer. I think that wears on teams."
If there was any indication that Reese's ankle was ailing in the second half, it was her transition, or lack thereof; Reese would often walk back up the court when she had the opportunity, and her teammates often looked gassed going into timeouts.
"We were [trying to outrun LSU], absolutely," Jensen said. "The way we run transition, we just said, 'keep going, as fast as you can go.' And I think we wore them down."
Indeed, if LSU was looking for a rest from Iowa's attack, the Hawkeye coaching staff wasn't going to give any free ones away; in addition to the frenetic pace of the game, Iowa didn't call its first timeout until 59 seconds remained in the game, with Iowa up 12.
According to Jensen, assistant coach Raina Harmon had been given the LSU scout. With results like this, it's no wonder Harmon's on a future head coach watch list.
And One
Life comes at you fast, Ms. Reese.