No. 3 Iowa 94, Nebraska 89: Back-to-Back-to-Back
MINNEAPOLIS — Before the confetti could fall on the Big Ten Tournament Sunday, Caitlin Clark's jump shot had to start falling first.
Clark scored 30 of her game-high 34 points after halftime as Iowa charged back from an 11-point halftime deficit to beat Nebraska in overtime, 94-89, clinching the Hawkeyes' third-straight Big Ten Tournament championship. Junior wing Sydney Affolter added a double-double with 11 points and 11 rebounds, earning her a spot next to Clark on the 2024 All-Tournament team.
Sophomore forward Hannah Stuelke scored 25 points in a matchup against stellar Nebraska big Alexis Markowski, who led the Huskers with 23 points of her own.
The Deep Three
1. Caitlin + Kate = the cheat code. At halftime, Caitlin Clark sat at just four points on 2-of-13 shooting, including 0-of-9 from behind the arc. By that point, Clark's deep shooting for the tourney sat at a bleak 6-for-34, or 17%, and sixth-year senior forward Kate Martin, averaging nearly 13 points on the season, was still scoreless. Accordingly, Iowa faced its largest halftime deficit of the season at 11 points.
That cold snap would not last.
Clark hit 5-of-8 three-pointers as part of her 30-point outburst in the second half and OT, while Martin added 13 points — and Iowa needed all of it.
Even though Iowa had tied the game at 58 by the start of the fourth quarter, the Hawkeyes' shooting started to cool off right as Nebraska's rims got friendlier.
A pair of Clark turnovers with under three minutes left gave Nebraska the ball and an eight-point lead, and it looked like the pesky Huskers might give the Hawkeyes one last bruise on their tourney resume with Selection Sunday looming a week away.
Nebraska guard Callin Hake missed a three-pointer on the ensuing possession, though, and Clark responded with a stepback triple to get Iowa back within five points, sparking a rally by Clark and Martin that saw the senior duo score 21 of Iowa's last 27 points.
"They left me wide open," Martin said. "That's what happens when Hannah's playing really well on the interior, and then Caitlin obviously draws so much attention. I'm just glad my teammates trusted me, Caitlin got me the ball and I was able to knock it down."
"[Nebraska forward Natalie Potts] helped off of Kate quite a bit," Clark said. "I trusted her to make the shot, and she knocked it down. I think that was the first three she made all night. That kind of fed into her going into overtime. Those are the moments you live for."
Indeed, Martin finished 4-for-5 on long-distance shooting Sunday; all four of her threes came in the fourth quarter and overtime, as a 1-seed in the NCAA tournament potentially hung in the balance.
"We have a lot of veterans on our team," Martin said. "We've been in tough positions before where we've been down. You just have to stay the course. We came back, hit some big shots and, ultimately won the game."
The go-ahead shot, as it turned out, belonged to Clark. As if it could be anyone else.
2. Iowa's role players were ready. Affolter, long known on the team as a hustle player off the bench, strode confidently into the hole in the starting lineup left by Molly Davis' injury and turned in an all-tourney performance, gathering six offensive rebounds as part of her double-double.
"It's really exciting to show the work that I've been putting in since my freshman year," Affolter said. "But the individual award is really a team award, in my opinion. Caitlin and I couldn't have done it without the rest our team."
Affolter only had a pair of assists Sunday, but the last was one of the team's biggest, directing teammates off an offensive rebound before finding Martin open in the corner to put Iowa up five.
"Our coaches are really awesome," Affolter said. "They really let us be basketball players first, and that [possession] was just part of our offense. That's why it's hard to scout us: we don't even know what we're going to do yet."
Affolter averaged 2.3 assists per game during the regular season, but kicked that up to 5.3 in the three-game stretch of the conference tournament. She stopped short of ascribing that ascension as a passer to Davis' absence, though.
"I've been capable of that for so long," Affolter said. "I do it every day in practice, I work so hard, so I don't think it's anything new to me, or my teammates or coaches who believed in me."
Elsewhere on the perimeter, Gabbie Marshall capped her reemergence as "Gabbie March-all" with a pair of three-pointers, finishing 8-for-18 (44.4%) from behind the arc for the tourney, but her late-game defense will live in Hawkeye history for as long as the Iowa women keep lacing their Nikes up.
"I was so hyped," Affolter said of Marshall's block. "Especially to get that block down the stretch in a championship game. We all know she's so capable of that every game."
Last, Hannah Stuelke continued her ascension as a force on the interior for the Hawkeyes with 25 points, including an overall 11-for-13 performance at the free-throw line in the Big Ten Tournament. Stuelke's only two misses from the charity stripe came near the end of overtime, with Iowa protecting a four-point lead with 37 seconds left.
"We weren't supposed to give the ball to Hannah in that situation," Bluder said after the game. "I probably should have subbed her at that point, so completely my fault to put her in that situation."
Stuelke didn't need to wait long for redemption, though; after Martin missed her second free throw with 18 seconds left and the Hawkeyes up three, Stuelke gathered the offensive rebound and drew another foul, hitting her last two freebies to put Iowa up by its final margin.
Those heroics helped solicit a heavy dose of emotion from Stuelke after the game, who was one of the first to receive an embrace from assistant head coach Jan Jensen as the streamers began to fall on the victorious Hawkeyes.
"We've worked so hard all season," said Stuelke. "It's just a huge buildup, and I get really happy and really excited."
3. One-seed confirmed... right? With South Carolina a stone-cold lock for the top overall seed on Selection Sunday and Stanford unlikely to be knocked off the one-line after losing to fifth-ranked USC, Iowa looks most like the third 1-seed in the tourney, which would be Iowa's first such honor since 1992, which C. Vivian Stringer still patrolled the sidelines for Iowa.
"I think we do deserve a No. 1 seed," Bluder said. "If we don't get it, oh, well. It's okay. That's life. We can't control that. But I think it would just mean a lot to our program and how far we've come to have that recognition."
Ultimately though, Iowa's less concerned about the one-seed (the Hawkeyes made the title game last season off the 2-line, after all) and more concerned with making sure its March run lasts as long as possible.
"If we don't get it, we're going to play the same basketball we would if we were 1, 2, 3, 4 [seeded]," Bluder said. "It doesn't matter."
"I think our group knows well enough that NCAA Tournament is the best postseason tournament in all of sports," Clark said. "If you don't have it for one night, your season's over in the blink of an eye. We're really only guaranteed one more game as a team, so you've got to come in and prepare every single day like it's your last. I know this team will do that."
Iowa will learn its fate for the NCAA Tournament on Selection Sunday, March 17, when ESPN unveils the bracket at 7 PM CT. There's one thing the Hawkeyes know for a fact, though: they're Big Ten Champions for the third straight season, and their ticket to the Big Dance is officially punched.