IOWA CITY — Iowa led by 11 points with six minutes left, but couldn't put the game away at the free throw line and lost in overtime to visiting Nebraska, 87-84.
Taylor McCabe made her third start of the season as head coach Jan Jensen continues to search for answers in her rotations, but McCabe missed a game-tying three-pointer with 22 seconds left and finished with five points on 2-for-7 shooting.
"It's no secret that it came down to those free throws, and we just needed one of those to go," said Jensen. "I do think I saw a lot of progress, though. I thought the flow was better. We were able to play faster."
"All of our losses have been very winnable games, which is the frustrating part," said Syd Affolter, who missed a game-tying three-pointer at the buzzer but finished with 10 points and 13 rebounds. "But we're going onto Oregon and Washington, and we're going to battle over there and give it our best shot."
THE DEEP THREE
1. The stripe unkind. It's not often that Iowa actively loses a game at the charity stripe, but Thursday it happened for the second time in Iowa's four-game losing streak. Lucy Olsen went 1-of=6 from the line for the game, all in the fourth quarter as Iowa's 11-point lead evaporated.
"We [coaches] do a lot of things, but we can't make free throws for them," said Jensen after the game. "That's the mental game. You turn that Maryland game in the second half, I don't think free throws are a problem as much."
Iowa finished 16-for-29 at the free throw lin on Thursday, which was at least nominally better than its 8-for-17 showing at Illinois but still enough to let the Huskers claw back and force free basketball. For the Hawkeyes (and a decent chunk of the crowd), that sudden extra homework seemed to be enough to derail overtime from the get-go as the offense ground to a listless halt.
"It's a lot of little things," said Hannah Stuelke. "We'll have lapses here and there, where we lose focus and miss an assignment. [The problems] are getting smaller, obviously, but we need to limit that as much as possible."
"That's just the hangover from not wanting to go to overtime," said Jensen. "They had the momentum. They're the team that got the momentum and we needed to punch first, and we weren't able to do that ... I just think we started to look in the rearview mirror instead of the next play."
Olsen, who hadn't missed more than three freebies in a game in her college career prior to Thursday, turned her disappointing performance into motivation, practicing her free throws on the court after the game:
Not even a thousand made free throws after the game can change the final score, of course. But if Olsen's performance at the line finds its own level again (she entered the game averaging a career-high 82.4% at the line), the extra work Thursday night may yet be what the Hawkeyes needed from the loss after all.
"I'm very upset about our execution, and I'm very upset about our free throws," said Jensen. "But I also know they didn't try to miss them. So you have to figure out why, and I [told the team] we'll visit about that. But the optimistic side of me is like, something like that is going to start going. It's going to go. ... When all looked lost, they came up with a really great tie-up, and we had enough sense to pull it down and find a wide-open player for a really great look."
"It just didn't go."
2. Iowa goes back to small-ball. Jensen went with her third different starting lineup in as many games Thursday, moving Stuelke back to the 5 and starting Taylor McCabe in the backcourt. Center Addi O'Grady played 12 minutes (10 points, three rebounds) in the loss, while freshman Ava Heiden stayed on the bench.
"Moving Hannah to the five didn't get Ava in the game, but that will be different moving forward," said Jensen. "Now I have three centers. So now the minutes, when Hannah's playing as well, that's where I have to figure it out. Because I think Ava Heiden's going to be really, really good. So that's the next challenge."
The gambit seems to have paid off, at least for Stuelke, who finished with 16 points and a career-high 16 rebounds, including five on the offensive glass. Stuelke had her hands full with Nebraska star forward Alexis Markowski (19 points, seven rebounds, four assists) but used her athleticism to limit the forward's effectiveness.
"Hannah had a good bounce to her tonight," said Jensen. "[Markowski] got some easy ones when we were trying to front and throw some different looks at her. We just really battled [with Markowski]."
Iowa frankly needed that bounce-back performance from Stuelke, who is up to a team-high five double-doubles on the season and continues to put in yeowomen's work against the parade of talented post players the Big Ten has to offer. And while her defense was noticeably improved, the turnaround started with Iowa using its small lineup to beat the Huskers in fast-break points, 15-0.
"I got the ball a little bit more, and I think it worked well within our offense," said Stuelke. "We got to get up and down a lot."
3. Aaliyah Guyton, ascendant. Though Jensen started McCabe Thursday, the star of the backcourt was true freshman Guyton, who played 26 minutes to McCabe's 25 and finished with a career-high-for-now 14 points, along with four assists and a pair of rebounds. Guyton also went three-for-five from deep in the loss, pushing her season average back to 50% at 16-for-32.
When asked after the game which player was stepping into the vocal leadership vacuum left by Kate Martin, Jensen answered without hesitation: "Aaliyah Guyton."
"[Guyton] does a heck of a job," said Jensen. "There's a reason she was in at the end last game, there's a reason she was playing tonight. She just has a really great perspective about it and I just love that. Syd [Affolter] also tries, but Aaliyah's got a really good 'steady.' She just moves on. ... The whole crowd might sigh when you miss free throws, but as a competitor it's the next, it's the next one. 'Okay, we missed it, gotta get that stop.' I think Aaliyah's wise beyond her years with that."
As Guyton continues to work back from her high-school ACL tear — she was only medically cleared for full practice by the Iowa staff on November 23, and made her Hawkeye debut two days later, six games into the season — every ounce of the coaches' preseason confidence in their freshman seems to be warranted, and she looks like the future of the point guard position at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
Iowa now sits at 12-6 (2-5) and will face Oregon (13-5, 4-3) on Sunday, January 19. The game tips at 4 pm CT, and will be streamed on Peacock.
