After guiding Iowa women's basketball to arguably the greatest season in program history in 2022-23, head coach Lisa Bluder will be staying around Iowa City for a few more years. On Friday, the Iowa athletics department announced that Lisa Bluder's contract had been extended through June 2029.
Bluder's contract was previously set to expire after the 2026 season. The new deal will push Bluder's tenure at Iowa to 29 years, as she was hired by Iowa 23 years ago, on April 7, 2000. Bluder has guided the Iowa program to enormous success since her arrival in Iowa City, highlighted by last season's first-ever appearance in the National Championship Game.
Lisa Bluder has won 850 games over the course of her career, making her one of just four active coaches with that many career victories (joining Stanford's Tara VanDerveer, UConn's Geno Auriemma, and Little Rock's Joe Foley). Bluder has averaged 25 wins per season over the last six years; if she's able to maintain that pace she could even join the sport's 1000-win club by the end of this new contract extension.
At Iowa, Bluder has gone 494-246 overall (.668 winning percentage) and 247-142 (.635) since her arrival. Bluder is not just the winningest coach in Iowa history, she also has the most Big Ten conference wins in history, supplanting former Iowa legend C. Vivian Stringer for that mark last season. No other active Big Ten coach has more than 160 wins.
Bluder has been named Big Ten Coach of the Year three times (2001, 2008, and 2010), though it's been 13 years since she was last honored as Big Ten Coach of the Year. She was named the Naismith National Coach of the Year in 2019.
The Hawkeyes have won two Big Ten regular season titles (2008, 2022) and four Big Ten Tournament championships (2001, 2019, 2022, 2023) under Bluder. Iowa has advanced to the postseason in 21* of Bluder's 23 seasons in charge, including 17 appearances in the NCAA Tournament.
*One of the two missing years was the COVID-canceled 2019-2020 postseason; Iowa was 23-7 (14-4) and ranked 21st in the nation when the rest of the year was canceled, and was closer to hosting the first two rounds of the NCAA tourney than to missing it.
Iowa has enjoyed its greatest success under Bluder in its most recent years, with runs to the Sweet 16 (or beyond) in three of the Hawkeyes' last four NCAA Tournament appearances. Iowa made the Elite 8 in 2019, the Sweet 16 in 2021, and the National Championship Game a season ago.
That tremendous team success has coincided with a string of standout individual stars recruited and developed by Bluder and her staff.
Iowa players have earned Big Ten Player of the Year honors in five of the last six seasons, from Megan Gustafson in 2018 and 2019 to Kathleen Doyle in 2020 to Caitlin Clark in 2022 and 2023. All three stars were named consensus All-Americans in those seasons as well, with Gustafson (2019) and Clark (2023) also earning consensus National Player of the Year honors as well.
Iowa's march to the National Championship Game in 2023 earned Bluder $310,000 in bonuses, as well as a 15% increase in her base salary (from $838,506 to $964,282). Terms of her new/extended contract have not yet been released.
Bluder has proven to be a very sound investment for Iowa ahtletics since Bob Bowlsby hired her from Drake to replace Angie Lee in 2000.
In addition to the tremendous on-court success that Bluder's teams have enjoyed, they've also turned into smashes at the box office as well. Iowa ranked second nationally in attendance last season, and is set to sell out all home games this season as well. Even before Caitlin Clark arrived in Iowa City and transfixed basketball fans across the state (and nation), though, Iowa routinely ranked among the the nation's best in women's basketball attendance, a testament to Bluder's achievements.
Extending Bluder's contract was, undoubtedly, one of the easiest decisions Gary Barta and the Iowa athletics department has had to make. She's been one of Iowa's most successful coaches for over 20 seasons and she's helped guide Iowa to the program's highest-ever levels of success in recent years.
This contract extension should further guarantee that Bluder will finish her career at Iowa, whenever that might be.
