IOWA CITY — Sometimes, it's as simple as who has the best player on the floor. Sunday, that was Lauren Betts.
Iowa couldn't protect a 12-point lead in the third quarter, and a pair of Elina Aarnisalo free throws with 3.8 seconds left gave UCLA a 67-65 win on Sunday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Betts scored a game-high 22 points with 12 rebounds and three blocks in a dominant performance, while Lucy Olsen's 17 points led four Hawkeyes in double figures.
With the loss, Iowa falls to 18-9, 8-8 in the Big Ten with two games left in the regular season.
THE DEEP THREE
1. 40 minutes of hell. Jan Jensen's first squad may not have the same firepower as its immediate predecessors, but it has arguably just as much competitive fire, game in and game out — and that's a high bar to clear.
Even in a conference whose ceiling is as high and wide as any in the nation, this team has proven it can take down any foe at Carver-Hawkeye Arena — or at least give anyone 40 minutes of hell on the way out.
See the third-ranked Bruins, who had to claw back from a 46-34 deficit in the third quarter then hold on for dear life as the upset-minded Hawkeyes tied the game on three Olsen free throws with 6.8 seconds left in the game.
"That was the moment where it was like, 'all right, you hit these free throws, we're going to win this game'," said Olsen. "I think everyone felt that momentum."
UCLA's star center Lauren Betts, a mortal lock for first-team All-American honors this season, worked over starting center Hannah Stuelke, who cedes five inches of height to the 6'7", ultra-athletic Betts. Betts helped stake UCLA to a 8-2 lead with six of those points, forcing Jensen to abandon the four-guard lineup before many fans had gotten back from the Carver Cone lines.
In came Addison O'Grady at the 5, moving Stuelke to her more natural 4 — ceding the floor-spacing presence and perimeter defense of a guard in the process.
The move paid off, as O'Grady's mid-range jump shooting helped the Hawkeyes keep pace until Betts committed her second foul of the afternoon (an offensive foul drawn by O'Grady, no less).
Betts' trip to the bench would last the rest of the half, which was welcome news for Iowa; the Hawkeyes' first three made layups of the game all came with Betts in Two-Foul Jail™, part of an 11-0 run that helped stake Iowa to a 36-29 halftime lead.
Carver's atmosphere stayed electric through halftime, buoyed by an appearance and interview from Super Bowl hero Cooper DeJean. But even if the halftime entertainment was competitive paint-drying, the Hawkeyes pushing the lead to 12 would have been more than enough ignition for the sold-out crowd to get behind, routinely topping 105 decibels.
2. Yep, that was the shot. Unfortunately, for as thrilling as the first 39:53 of the game was for the sold-out Carver crowd, the last seven seconds were an anticlimactic thud.
Olsen was called for a block with 3.8 seconds left after tripping over her screener, Angela Dugalic — and thus tripping Aarnisalo, whose free throws gave the Bruins their final 67-65 lead.
"The end of the game, it ends like that?" said Jensen. "A game that good, in the sense of going back-and-forth. It's a trip. Given the circumstances, I do believe they had to call that, but what are the chances? It's a weird tie-up, and by rule, if it looks like a trip you have to call it, but I thought that was unfortunate."
"The foul, I just got caught on the screen accidentally," said Olsen. "I got hit on the screen, so it bumped me over. I couldn't really do anything about that, and I just fell. And they called a foul on me falling. I don't know. I guess I was not in legal guarding position, that's what they said, so I guess it makes sense. It's just frustrating."
Iowa had one last shot to win, but an O'Grady three-pointer from the top of the key missed badly, effectively ending the game.
O'Grady was an unlikely candidate to take the game-winning shot, to say the least, especially from three-point range, where she hadn't shot in a game since the first game of her sophomore season.
"We were looking at three different looks," said Jensen. "First look, Hannah, with a really quick dive on a screen. Second look, Lucy coming around. If two of them went with Lucy, Addison was going to be there. And we got a look, you know?"
"I was telling them in one of our last timeouts, we know that Hannah's going to try to get to her right-hand drive off those brush actions," said UCLA head coach Cori Close. "We know that Olsen's going to get to that midrange and try to get around you, get you up in the air, and sure enough, that's what they do."
Olsen, Stuelke and O'Grady are all legitimate options with the game on the line, of course, and at that point nobody on the team was shooting better from the field than O'Grady, whose miss landed her at 4-of-8 for the game for 10 points...
...nobody except Taylor McCabe, whose 10 points came on 4-of-6 shooting, but who also didn't get a shot up in the fourth quarter, despite playing all 10 minutes.
"I feel like we have been so close over these last two games, and I know we can play with anybody," said McCabe. "It's just going to come down to how we execute at the end of games, and our shot selection probably needs to be better as well."
Obviously, one does not simply draw up a shot for a player with under four seconds to play, especially against a team with the elite defensive capabilities of UCLA. O'Grady's shot was part of the package because, well, it had to be.
"Addi was the last option, and I knew Betts would not be coming out on her," said Jensen.
Indeed, Betts' presence wasn't just the focal point of Iowa's last-play strategy, it was the difference-maker in the game. Instead of forcing the Bruin big into further foul trouble, Iowa let Betts stay at two for the game — and stay in the game for all 20 minutes of the second half, where she recorded 10 of her 12 rebounds, including four on the offensive glass.
The Bruins out-rebounded Iowa 25-11 in the second half, and their 10 second-chance points in the second half were crucial in the comeback over the host Hawkeyes.
"It was a change in toughness; it was a change in aggression," said Close. "Iowa's one of the best box-out teams in the nation."
3. Don't blame the referees. Olsen was tripped by Angela Dugalic on the final play. It was more egregious than the moving screen that was correctly called on UConn's Aaliyah Edwards at the end of last year's Final Four game.
But Iowa didn't lose this game because of the referees. The chances to win were there, and the Hawkeyes simply didn't execute on them.
"At the end of the day, you have to adjust," said Jensen. "There's one rule of law, and that's it. You don't have time to take it to appeals court. You've got to figure it out."
Before the unfortunate blocking call on Olsen, the game looked liable to hinge on a fifth foul against Kiki Rice, called for a charge drawn by Kylie Feuerbach near midcourt. Iowa suddenly had the ball back down 64-62 with just 40 seconds left on the clock.
Stuelke couldn't score over Betts on the ensuing possession, though — Iowa went 3-of-13 from the field in the fourth quarter, including 0-for-4 in the last 3:09 — and Iowa's lack of answers in the half-court against an elite defense was a bigger factor than an untrustworthy whistle.
"We just take too many bad shots at the wrong time," said Jensen. "We took some really ill-advised shots, and I can't explain that."
None of this is to call Sunday's officiating acceptable, because it wasn't.
After a third quarter that saw UCLA go 7-for-9 at the line while not even getting called for its first foul until less than two minutes remained, the zebras put the Hawkeyes in the bonus with 8:18 to go in the game — while simultaneously whistling Iowa for three fouls of its own in the first two minutes.
The cadence of botched call-makeup call became familiar over the course of the game, but all that meant was bad calls were on a BOGO special that no one asked for.
The disjointed fourth quarter saw the two teams shoot a collective 8-for-29 (.276), with 14 of the quarter's 32 combined points coming at the free-throw line.
But UCLA hardly played well enough to be unbeatable in the fourth quarter, with or without the officials' supposed "help." Iowa had its opportunities and didn't execute on them. And that's the difference between a second resume-defining win and another week on the dreaded 8-9 line with Selection Sunday looming.
Iowa's next game is a trip to Michigan (19-8, 10-6 Big Ten) on Wednesday, February 26, at 6 PM. That game is slated for streaming-only on Big Ten Plus.
