It was evident that the two weeks off due to Covid issues within the program hurt the Iowa women’s basketball team as they fell to the Duke Blue Devils at Cameron Indoor Stadium 79-64.
Iowa struggled to make shots in close near the hoop, they allowed offensive rebounds, their bench contributors didn’t score, they turned the ball over, they couldn’t make three point shots, and Caitlin Clark had her worst shooting night as a Hawkeye. However, one thing is clear. That is not the Iowa team that fans should expect the rest of the season.
“We did not play up to our capabilities…Certainly this wasn’t an Iowa performance that we were proud of, and we need to regroup quickly because we open up Big Ten play on Sunday,” said Coach Bluder who is stuck at 799 career wins.
The game got off to a good start with the Hawkeyes jumping out to an 8-2 lead with Monika Czinano scoring all eight points. She would finish the game with 21 points on 9/12 shooting. But from that point on everything that could go wrong for the Hawkeyes went wrong.
Iowa turned the ball over 11 times in the first half, but were trailing just 36-28 at half due in part to Duke turning the ball over 12 times themselves.
Coming out of halftime, the Blue Devils would go on an 8-2 run, forcing Lisa Bluder to call a timeout and the Hawkeyes just could not recover vs a Duke team that was playing good defense and had a good size Cameron Indoor crowd behind them.
“I don’t want to take anything away from Duke’s defense, but certainly you could tell that our timing was off,” said Bluder. “This is the first time we had seen pressure defense all year…Certainly those games that we missed out on would have helped prepare us for this situation, but in the end, we’ve got to move on.”
Iowa tried late in the third and early in the fourth quarter to cut the lead down, but the things that they emphasized this offseason kept them from making any type up run. The Blue Devils pulled down 16 offensive boards and turned it into 14 second chance points, while they also turned 18 Iowa turnovers into 19 points. That’s a substantial 33 points that could have been avoided.
“We did not box out well at all. I was pretty frustrated. We were turning and we weren’t finding a body to put on anybody. We were giving up way too many second chance points,” said Coach Bluder. “That definitely really hurt us, giving up those easy shots.”
After the 8-2 start to the game, Duke outscored the Hawkeyes 77-56 and really were never challenged on the way to their seventh straight victory to open the season. The most surprising stat line from the game? Caitlin Clark shooting 27 shots and going 1/13 from behind the 3pt arc.
At times it felt like, with the team behind, Caitlin was forcing some shots to get anything to fall to try to get the team back into it, but it never happened. She would finish the game with 22 points, 9 rebounds and 8 assists, but Lisa Bluder said she felt Caitlin forced things.
“She took some really hard threes. She’s got to be smarter and when they’re not falling, get to the rim a little bit better. Quit taking them and she just kept going and going,” said Bluder on Clark’s uncharacteristic night. “You want shooters to have short memory, but that might have been a little too short tonight.”
Despite, the tough love for Caitlin’s shot selection tonight, Coach Bluder was confident that she will bounce back in a big way for her team the rest of the season.
“This won’t carry over for Caitlin. It just won’t. She’s better than that, she’s smarter than that. We just need to get her rhythm back. She’ll be there.”
Wrapping things up, Kate Martin put up 12 points and 7 rebounds, but had 6 turnovers, while McKenna Warnock had 7 points and 8 rebounds. The team shot just 3/19 from the 3pt line and were outscored 29-2 in bench points.
The Hawkeyes will look to bounce back on the home court Sunday when they take on the Michigan State Spartans in the Big Ten opener. Lisa Bluder is still searching for her 800th career win and it would feel right to get it at Carver.
