Iowa withstood a freak (but minor) pregame injury to point guard Lucy Olsen to repel an upset bid by Rhode Island, 69-62, in Cancun Challenge play in Mexico. Addison O'Grady led the Hawkeyes with 18 points on 8-for-9 shooting, and Hannah Stuelke added 13 points.
Olsen, a senior transfer from Villanova who has led the Hawkeyes with 17 points per game this season, suffered a deep cut to her knee after tripping over the court at practice, according to head coach Jan Jensen. Olsen was officially listed as questionable but missed Thursday's game, and is considered game-to-game by the team.
"We were just getting ready to practice," said Jensen. "Lucy just kind of tripped, then kind of came off the floor and hit a ledge. She had a pretty significant gash on her knee. Thankfully we had some team docs with us and they got her taken care of." Olsen is considered game-to-game.
1. Backcourt by (ad hoc) committee. Olsen's season is not in any jeopardy with the cut to her knee, but Iowa's backcourt, which is already working from behind with inexperience and a lack of practice, certainly didn't need to see its main scorer and facilitator down for any amount of time.
"We finished with 22 [turnovers], which is a little too much," said assistant coach Raina Harmon. "Having some players that don't have a ton of experience, playing out of position, point guard position, against the press, in Cancun... that's tough to ask for anybody."
True freshman Taylor Stremlow earned her first career start in Olsen's stead Saturday — in character for the fearless freshman, but ultimately out of position, and it showed as she led Iowa with six of its 22 turnovers.
"We had not faced pressure this whole year," said Jensen. "Their pressure was fine, but it wasn't what we're going to face. Scouting-wise, I'm sure people will lick their chops. A lot of what we we did was rushing, and we just weren't getting to our correct spots."
There's a peculiar irony to a true freshman who had been cleared for full practice less than a week ago being the steadying force for a backcourt, but 15 clutch minutes from Aaliyah Guyton kept the Hawkeyes moving through the turbulence.
"For Aaliyah to have only played, what, three minutes in a college game, then she comes in tonight and plays almost 15," said Harmon. "The kid is fearless, and that's why I recruited her."
Guyton, who made her season debut Sunday in Iowa's 72-43 win, came off the bench for seven points and a pair of assists in Thursday's win, as well as a steal and a block to back up her defensive reputation coming out of Peoria, Illinois. She also made the first basket of her college career Thursday — her first two, in fact, a consecutive pair of threes that helped Iowa regain a 40-37 lead in the tumultuous third quarter.
"They weren't guarding her at all from the top of the key," said Harmon. "For me, that was the turning point of the game."
Stremlow acquitted herself more than well as the emergency starting point — she led the team in assists with four and is unlikely to reproduce a six-turnover night — but it may behoove Jensen to cycle some seniors like Kylie Feuerbach or Taylor McCabe over from the 2 until Olsen can return.
While Stremlow going scoreless isn't a concern, her zero rebounds, steals or blocks are more indicative of what Iowa was missing with the personnel movement, and it was almost as palpably absent from the identity of Iowa's game Thursday as was Olsen's stewardship of the offense. Iowa will either have to figure out a way to get her playmaking ability unlocked from the perimeter or live without it until Olsen can return.
2. Addison Avenue. Iowa trailed at halftime for the first time this season, 26-25, after a listless six-point second quarter. The Hawkeyes' chief problems: ball control, and an inability to get the ball inside to O'Grady, who walked into the locker room with only two points on 1-for-2 shooting.
"I really challenged our post players at halftime," said Jensen. "The other post players were jamming us in the back, and we were getting out-maneuvered. We want to post up at the lane line, and when they would shove us off the block — it's not a foul, we weren't holding our ground — we could never get a post entry pass, because we're like four feet away from the guard."
The Hawkeyes went to O'Grady for their first three baskets of the second half, part of a 16-point second half on 7-for-7 shooting for the surging senior. O'Grady's 18 points led the team, as did her three blocks on the defensive end as she continues to make strides on that end of the floor as well.
Iowa's inability to get the post game in gear in the first half correlated with a glacial 50-point pace. Of course, the team was missing Olsen's scoring, but it was still missing that in the second half when it scored 44 points anyway. O'Grady's +14 accounted for most of Iowa's +19 half-over-half surge in scoring, in a seven-point victory, that's the difference between a close win and a shocking upset loss.
When Iowa made its 12-0 surge to take control of the game, O'Grady didn't just participate in the run, she led it. After checking in at the start of the fourth quarter, O'Grady went on the following tear:
- assist to Stuelke for Iowa's first basket
- layup for Iowa's second basket (assist by Syd Affolter)
- layup for Iowa's third basket (off a turnover, assist by Stuelke)
- layup for Iowa's fourth basket (fast break assist by Affolter)
- fifth rebound of the day
- two free throws for Iowa's ninth and tenth points
O'Grady then checked out at the 5:57 mark, having scored or assisted on all 10 of Iowa's points in the run, a four-minute virtuosa performance (or whatever the Cancun equivalent would be).
3. Queens under pressure. "Even before we had Lucy get hurt, I'd been preaching to [the players] that these island games are hard," Jensen said. "Everybody's got to handle the sun, the fun, it's not reality. We've got to come in, being a relatively young team, and have the focus."
That focus couldn't have come at a better time. Iowa's 12-0 run not only gave Iowa its biggest lead of the game at 61-49, the Rams didn't break it until 3:23 remained in the game, and the scant clock didn't let them get any closer than six the rest of the way.
That's 7:21 of game time, holding an opponent scoreless in the second half and turning a tie game into one with a little bit of the breathing room you'd ask for in paradise.
"To be able to hold a team like Rhode Island to 62 points, when our offense isn't clicking, is kind of becoming the identity of this team — to bring it defensively," said Harmon.
After O'Grady checked out during the tail end of Iowa's run, in came Ava Heiden, who immediately scored an athletic layup off a Guyton assist to push Iowa's lead to 12, in what would be its largest of the game.
"Ava came in and did some nice things," said Jensen. "She established really low."
That's two freshmen putting the exclamation point on what proved to be a game-winning run — and neither of them were the freshman trusted to start at point guard and lead the team in assists on a few hours' notice.
Were there speed bumps and missteps in the first three quarters, creating a decent amount of the adversity to begin with? Most certainly, and that's part of the acclimation to the college game.
"I don't know how many times we had three freshmen in there tonight," said Jensen, who played four freshmen for a combined 56 minutes Thursday. "I'm hopeful now that the freshmen have got more of the jitters out now, and they'll come back out even stronger and more confident tomorrow."
O'Grady was a little more candid about it.
"If they make a stupid mistake, we'll just tell them to shake it off, it's okay," she said. "We know they're going to make some of those, so just coming in prepared for that, giving them encouragement that they're going do a good job the next play."
Worth noting, of course, that this was Rhode Island, a 28-point underdog. 5-1 BYU looms Friday and — if Olsen is limited, and maybe even if she isn't — the Cougars might have the best playmaking threat on the floor.
That would be G Delaney Gibb, who averages nearly 18 points a game for the Cougars as well as five rebounds and five assists per game. Gibb can barry the three to the tune of nearly 38%, and she's robin opponents to the tune of 1.5 steals a game. Mauricently, she dropped 20 points and five threes in a 63-51 win over Rice earlier Thursday in Cancun. Will she continue that fever pitch Friday night, or will Iowa's undefeated season be stayin' alive?
Tipoff is at 8 PM Central Friday night (directly coinciding with the second half of Iowa-Nebraska football) and will once again be streamed on FloSports for the very real price of a $19.99 monthly subscription, though the Hawkeye Radio Broadcast is always available on YouTube as well.
