Every team wants to come out, dominate and look flawless in the season opener, but that isn’t how it always works out. In the case of facing the Southern women’s basketball team, that is rarely how it works out. The Hawkeyes worked through a foul filled first quarter and used a 28-5 second quarter to open things up towards their eventual 87-34 season opening victory.
“It wasn’t the prettiest game to start the season, but Southern came out very physical and I think at first that kind of shocked us,” said Head Coach Lisa Bluder.
“We know not every game is going be pretty, we’re going to have to find a way to win ugly,” said Caitlin Clark. “We’re not going to make every three and there were a lot of threes that went in and out tonight…We found other way s to score, but I think we’re focusing on going 1-0 every day.”
The opening quarter started out very choppy, with the Jaguars getting whistled for ten fouls, while the Hawkeyes turned it over seven times. The teams combined to shoot just 8/30 from the floor and Iowa led just 15-10. A scary moment came just 3:07 into the game when Caitlin Clark went down with a turned ankle and limped off the court to the locker room.
“Kind of just a freak injury,” said Clark. “I think I just stepped on her foot and just tweaked my ankle a little bit, but things like that happen. I was just like “tape it up, I want back out there”.
Caitlin returned to the game and the Hawkeyes got things rolling in the second quarter. A pair of 3pt makes from Clark got the lead up to 21-10 and forced Southern Head Coach Carlos Funchess to take a timeout. Unfortunately for the Jaguars, Iowa was off and running. McKenna Warnock and Kate Martin knocked down threes on back-to-back possessions to push the lead to 30-10 with 5:49 before half. The 15-10 lead quickly turned into a 43-15 onslaught at the break.
The second half was more of the same with Iowa outscoring Southern 44-19 en route to the 87-34 victory. The Hawkeyes held the Jaguars to 12/57 (21.1%) shooting from the floor and allowed them to get just two second chance points on two offensive rebounds.
“I thought we made them take quite a few contested mid-range jumpers, which is a cornerstone of our defense,” said Caitlin Clark. “We always want to make them take hard twos. We don’t want to give them easy threes. We knew the players on their team that could shoot threes and I thought we contested pretty well.”
The depth off the bench was evident for the Hawkeyes, as they contributed 41 points, including ten points from Hannah Stuelke, nine points from Taylor McCabe and seven points from Molly Davis. All 13 players that played had at least two points.
“I thought our bench play was really solid tonight and I’m excited about it because I feel like we have a little more depth than we’ve ever had,” said Bluder. “I think that’s really going to be an asset down the line.”
