IOWA CITY — When you're in a rock fight, you can rely on finesse... or you can find the biggest rock and throw it.
Thursday, Kansas State center Ayoka Lee was the rock.
Lee scored 10 of her 22 points in the fourth quarter to go with 12 rebounds as KSU upset No. 2 Iowa at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, 65-58. The Wildcats scored the last 12 points of the game to pull away for the road win.
Caitlin Clark led all scorers with 24 points, but a 9-for-32 shooting line with 2-for-16 shooting from deep doomed the Hawkeye offense.
"We weren't going to guard [Clark] with one player," KSU head coach Jeff Mittie said after the win. "We knew that in transition, we were going to have to guard her in waves. And we knew that if she got past the first wave, we were going to bring somebody else to get her. And that was our gameplan going in."
Kansas State's win mirrored its 84-83 upset over Iowa in Manhattan last year, and the physicality was turned up even more in Thursday's game, with heavy contact on both ends of the floor often going uncalled.
"I don't know if you can adjust to [officiating] as the game goes on," Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder said. "I think you've gotta play your game. It's too hard to adjust to each [official] when there's three of them on the floor."
Super sub Molly Davis added 11 points, and Hannah Stuelke scored nine points to go with her 11 rebounds, but with Clark outshooting her teammates, who combined for 29 attempts in the loss, there wasn't much opportunity for the Hawkeye offense to find a hot hand.
The game started close and ugly and stayed that way for the duration, with neither team leading by more than seven points. Iowa simply could not get its outside shooting going, and the supporting cast was never there to cover the slack.
"It started off kind of rough for us, and it never felt like we were really able to get our feet back under us and regain full control of the game," Clark said. "We had some good moments, we did some good things from time to time. But me not finishing cuts or throwing the ball out of bounds, or in the first half we had the ball go off our hands, and that's just not like us. Those aren't mistakes we make on a day-to-day basis."
Bluder agreed with her point guard.
"There was really no flow to the game," Bluder said. "We couldn't get our transition game going, it wasn't really good Iowa basketball. Nine assists on 16 turnovers is really not us. But I wanted to give credit to Kansas State — I thought their defense was excellent. They're long, they've got a good rim protector."
Indeed, it was Kansas State's relentless defensive pressure — the Wildcat defense is currently allowing just 44 points a game after Thursday's win — that forced Iowa into numerous mistakes and pressure situations it wasn't able to convert on.
"We were able to keep them from getting the easy runouts," Mittie said. "Stuelke didn't get the easy ones. [Gabbie] Marshall had such a great game on Sunday where she got a lot of threes in transition; we wanted to try to make that as hard as we could on them, and that's easier said than done."
"It sounds great when it works, but the challenge of that is, everybody has to be on point with what we're doing," Mittie said. "So we were good at what we wanted to do. And sometimes with Caitlin, it doesn't matter how good you are, she can still knock shots down. So we were fortunate to do our job and have her miss some."
At the end of the day, though, Iowa's imbalance on offense was obvious — and the Hawkeyes need to figure out how to ensure this November problem doesn't become a March problem.
"Our centers shot 58 percent from the field tonight," Bluder said. "58 percent! Hannah [Stuelke] gets one shot in the second half. She was 4-for-5 and gets one shot in the second half. They need to have more looks. We have to have faith in them. Right now I don't know if we do."
That "we" Bluder mentioned seemed to be directed at her players — and more precisely her backcourt.
"We have to look for [the bigs] more," Bluder said. "Setting more screens for them. And having the opportunity to give them the ball. I think we could have given them the ball more tonight."
Clark, naturally, wasn't there to shirk any responsibility.
"Like Coach Bluder said, it's just not Iowa basketball," Clark said. "Me as a point guard, I have to take responsibility for that. I have to get us in our offense a little better, I have to have a little better shot selection. I don't think I really helped myself getting to the basket and taking advantage of fouls when we needed to. But we can still win games when we don't shoot the ball well, so there were a lot of other areas we can improve on."
"We have to understand we're not going to shoot the ball great every game, but we have to find other ways to win," Clark continued. "I thought that's the biggest area we grew in last year, and another area we can grow in this year. I think the maturity of this group will understand this loss isn't going to break our season or whatever, it's just going to teach us a lot of things we can get better at. That's the exciting part, we get to come back to work and play a really good Drake team on Sunday."
Iowa tips off against the Bulldogs at 6 PM CT on Sunday, November 19 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
