Nebraska 82, No. 2 Iowa 79: Lead Evaporates, History Waits
Life, as the saying goes, is what happens when we're busy making other plans. On Sunday, the Nebraska Cornhuskers gave Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes a little more life than most people expected.
Nebraska rallied from 14 points back to start the fourth quarter to stun Iowa, 82-79, at the Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, Nebraska. Clark finished with 31 points, 10 assists and eight rebounds in the loss, but in the fourth quarter she went 0-6 from the field and 0-4 from deep, remaining eight points away from the NCAA career scoring record as the team heads back home to face Michigan on Thursday.
Kate Martin added 20 points for the Hawkeyes, while Jaz Shelley paced the Huskers with 23 points — 10 coming in the fateful fourth.
THE DEEP THREE
1. Caitlin Clark tried to break the record. Much will be made about Caitlin Clark's second-half performance, as she erupted for 14 points in the third quarter, helping push Iowa's lead to a seemingly safe 69-55 and positioning herself eight points away from breaking the all-time record.
The message from the team had been consistently two-fold: Clark breaking the career record at Carver would be preferable, but winning comes first.
As Iowa's lead steadily dwindled in the fourth quarter, Clark ran the offense at a slower pace, and Nebraska's defense ran a box-and-one to target Clark and stymie the Hawkeye attack. It worked.
"[They need to] run our zone offense, which they didn't do," Bluder said. "They just stood there. It's really easy to match up when we just stand. We got stagnant. That's my fault, I've got to make them do it."
Clark took the offense back on her shoulders down the stretch, but to no avail, as she missed all six of her attempts from the field in the final quarter — including all four three-point attempts. Clark's green light is perpetual (rightfully so), but most of those attempts were not the best looks Iowa could have generated, either.
Either way, the offense was out of rhythm — enough that Bluder even called a timeout mid-possession immediately after an offensive rebound of a Clark missed three, with 5:55 left and Iowa still leading by eight. Whatever was discussed in the timeout didn't take, either; Iowa could only generate an off-balance jumper by Stuelke as the shot clock dwindled, and would be outscored 19-8 the rest of the way.
Instead of speculating on a strategic blunder, though, the simpler answer is that Clark tried breaking the NCAA career record Sunday, and — for once — she just didn't get her job done.
If anything, Clark tried too hard to score down the stretch — and even as the game made itself a more immediate concern than the record, she couldn't solve the Husker attack on either side of the court. All told, Nebraska outscored Iowa 27-10 in the fourth quarter.
It's a fitting reminder, for both Clark and the basketball world as a whole, that nobody — not even one of the best guards to ever play college ball — has complete control over a game by themselves. Basketball rewards its best, but it's still a fickle beast.
2. Without another facilitator. After missing the last 36 minutes of Thursday's win over Penn State, Molly Davis barely came off the bench Sunday, logging only two minutes and missing her only shot from the field.
Bluder said Thursday that Davis had been dealing with an illness, and that she had tried to go that day but clearly couldn't compete. That appeared to be the case as well Sunday.
Davis' absence in the Hawkeyes' holster was palpable, especially as the game progressed.
Nebraska's ability to focus a box-and-one defense on Clark was predicated on the Hawkeyes' lack of playmaking ability elsewhere on the floor. Kate Martin went 2-for-5 from the perimeter in the fourth quarter, a respectable 40% — and that was over half of Iowa's scoring for the entire quarter.
Not that Iowa coaches are willing to cede Nebraska's win to schematics.
"That really surprises me, that against the box-and-one, we didn't score better," Bluder said. "We had been, we do in practice, but we kind of got stagnant in that situation."
Nonetheless, if Davis were healthy, not only would she have been able to pace a backcourt rotation to keep legs fresher down the stretch, but her ability to be a second point guard on the floor would effectively take a box-and-one off the table, as the man-defender would have to choose between Clark and the ball.
Also, just for her presence on the court Davis is a heck of a useful player, at 5.2 assists per 40 minutes and shooting 66%(!) on two-pointers. The Hawkeyes could have used plenty of both Sunday.
In that sense, at least, this loss is as isolated an incident as Davis' illness, though it exposed more of the Hawkeyes' (and, well, Clark's) reliance on Davis' presence than many would have suspected coming into the season.
3. Is this really a 40-minute team? Perhaps the most concerning aspect of the Hawkeyes' loss, though, is the familiarity.
Kansas State 65, Iowa 58: Iowa leads 58-51 in fourth quarter, gives up 12-0 run to end game
Iowa 76, Michigan State 73: Iowa leads 66-57 in fourth quarter, gives up 14-5 run
OSU 100, Iowa 92 (OT): Iowa leads 72-61 in fourth quarter, gives up 16-4 run
Iowa 93, Maryland 85: Iowa leads 58-40 in third quarter, gives up 23-3 run
Nebraska 82, Iowa 79: Iowa leads 73-61 in fourth quarter, gives up 8-0, 10-0 runs
That's an undeniable pattern, and Clark addressed it directly before any record talk.
"I think the biggest focus right now is finding ways to grow, finding ways to get better," Clark said. "Because that's another case of us blowing another lead, and that's something that has to stop. We could have executed a lot better."
Sunday, the culprit was Davis' absence and the elephant at midcourt, Clark's looming record; both should be non-factors imminently. But just as Tolstoy said every unhappy family is unhappy in their own way, every fourth-quarter collapse has been its own unique failure. The fact that Iowa has now blown three such leads and flirted with blowing two more is a self-evident concern, especially as Iowa's grasp on a 1-seed in March is potentially at stake from here on out.
For as problematic as the offensive shortcomings are, though, it's still true that the best way to stop a run is to string together stops, and the best way to start a run is to string together stops. Iowa found itself the victim of multiple scoreless droughts in the fourth as the Huskers answered both Martin three-pointers with treys of their own on the ensuing possessions. Shots can fall or not, but defensive focus is always a choice.
"We had some mental turnovers on defense," Bluder said. "Let some people get open, and that's disappointing."
To that end, if Clark can be taken out of rhythm down the stretch, everything seems liable to fall apart for Iowa. How the team keeps its best player from being this containable will be paramount in determining how long this season's chase for glory lasts.