In a season full of what-if losses and close calls, at least the end came decisively for Iowa.

Host Oklahoma overwhelmed the Hawkeyes, 96-62, to advance to the Sweet 16 in Spokane and end Jan Jensen's first season as Iowa head coach. Iowa was out-rebounded 64-33 in the loss, including 24-5 in offensive rebounds.

Lucy Olsen led all scorers with 20 points in the win, including four three-pointers.

1. A team loss. If there's anything "good" to come out of a thrashing like this, it's that nobody has to spend the offseason thinking they were the sole reason the season ended. Basketball's a team sport, win or lose, and Iowa sure lost as a team on Monday.

As a team, the Hawkeyes committed 20 turnovers to just 16 assists. Their vaunted transition game generated zero points, negating a crucial element of the motion offense. Sharpshooters Sydney Affolter, Taylor McCabe and Aaliyah Guyton combined to go 1-for-16 from the field and 1-of-10 from deep. And the rebounding was self-evidently non-conducive to winning basketball.

"Tonight wasn't our night," said Kylie Feuerbach. "[Oklahoma] shot really well, and they had a really good scout as well. But I'm really proud of the team."

A pair of Feuerbach triples helped Iowa open up a 10-4 lead to start the game — the Hawkeyes' only lead, as it would turn out.

Feuerbach made 4-of-6 three-pointers in the loss, while Olsen canned four as well — including one to beat the buzzer and bring Iowa back within 38-27 at the half. Iowa was 5-for-19 from two-point range at the 20-minute mark, a frightening assessment of its ability to generate makable looks at the rim, while the Sooners were 2-for-17 from behind the arc.

The good news for Iowa, then, was that it could have been worse. The bad news, as it turned out: it was due to get worse.

The Hawkeyes gave up 58 points in the second half, including 15 to Skylar Vann and 14 to Payton Verhulst, after the two Sooners scored two apiece in the first half. That 58 points is more than Iowa allowed in seven games this season, including Friday's first-round romp over Murray State.

READ MORE: Iowa 92, Murray State 57: Shutdown Saturday

Raegan Beers was the dominant force in the middle that Iowa feared, with 11 points, 13 rebounds, four blocks and two steals in just 18 minutes, being limited early by foul trouble. Beers also drew a controversial-at-best intentional foul on Hannah Stuelke on a layup early in the third quarter, though Stuelke freely acknowledged afterwards that she had (inadvertently) caught Beers in the chin with her elbow.

But Oklahoma did most of its damage with Beers on the bench — a +10 in her 18 minutes on, and +24 in her 22 minutes off. Backup forward Liz Scott (11 points, seven rebounds, two steals) and Waterloo, Iowa native Sahara Williams (13 points, nine rebounds, four assists, two blocks) provided the dynamic front-court depth that Iowa couldn't match.

2. Crashed on the glass. There's a lot of finesse in basketball, especially Iowa's system. When it works, it's beautiful. But basketball's still a high-contact sport, and Oklahoma is built for that contact in a way that Iowa just isn't, up and down the roster.

"[Oklahoma is an] SEC team, so really physical, a lot more than the Big Ten," said Stuelke. "We knew going in that they were an amazing rebounding team, that's something they hang their hat on, and we just got out-boarded."

READ MORE: Oklahoma 96, Iowa 62: OUtmuscled

Oklahoma collected 24 offensive rebounds Monday — 46% of the team's misses, and good enough to generate 22 second-chance points. Every Oklahoma starter corralled at least two o-boards, while Iowa as a team only mustered five.

"They have some big girls," said Affolter. "Big posts, big guards, all around. It was definitely physical, and we could have done much better on the boards. I thought we did a little bit better job in the second half."

By midway through the third quarter, Jensen finally pulled the trigger on moving Stuelke to the 4 to get Heiden on the floor, but the Hawkeyes were already down 17 and free-falling.

In fact, a bigger lineup usually isn't the move to make up large deficits in a short amount of time — it's the unit that spends time in the first half keeping the rebounding (and the balance of play) within reach of a team who can heat up late. By moving Stuelke to the 4 and taking a three-point threat off the court, Jensen made the perimeter easier for Oklahoma to defend — the personnel equivalent of closing the barn doors with the cattle long gone.

That's not to say Iowa bagged it — quite the contrary, per Jensen, who praised her team's effort in those late, doomed minutes:

"When I watched us during that struggle, that they just kept their head down and believing," said Jensen. "I think that's great growth. I'm thrilled that we were able to be comfortable with leaving the tournament."

Certainly, though the game was long past any semblance of doubt, both Iowa and Oklahoma gave each other 40 minutes of spirited, clean competition — the best compliment two teams can give to the game, regardless of the scoreboard.

Sure, the intentional foul on Stuelke was nonsense, and the technical foul Jensen earned shortly thereafter was (if anything) the tipping point of the late avalanche, but the game never became a cynical affair, and that can't always be taken for granted.

3. The road ahead. The lopsided scoreboard bears out a bleak reality: Iowa rarely looked like a team capable of beating that Oklahoma team, or winning that type of game.

Affolter (5'11") and Stuelke (6'2"), Iowa's starting 4 and 5 in its small-ball phase, were simply not physically capable of matching up against the Sooners' frontcourt. Even with those undersized, four-guard lineups, Iowa couldn't generate a single fast-break point in the game. The vaunted freshman class, with four season-long rotation contributors, found itself unable to match Oklahoma's level of physicality on either end of the court — a physicality it had rarely encountered this season.

"We have a lot of great pieces, but they're young," said Jensen. "Ava hasn't been here before. This is the first time she's had to go against someone who can tower over her, give you a [body] shot. But now, what's great is, she understands what that next level looks like."

And as tall, deep teams like South Carolina, LSU and (yep) Oklahoma run roughshod to the Sweet 16, the message to Jensen is pretty clear: it's time to muscle up.

"[The transfer portal] opens tomorrow, and we'll be really busy tomorrow," said Jensen. "I love the pieces we have coming back; I just think we need a little more size. [...] I love our freshmen, I love the incomers. If we could just get a couple portal pieces, we could have some fun."

With the staff's optimism, though, a word of caution to fans: just because a player is on a wish list, or looks like a good fit on paper, or even shows mutual interest with Iowa at some point, doesn't mean she's Iowa's — or any school's — recruit to win or lose. It also doesn't imply that every — or any — decision comes down to a bidding war.

It's about relationships and fits, on and off the court, and sometimes another school has a different vision to sell that the recruit prefers. And when it comes to players who can push Iowa past the brink of the Sweet 16, there won't be any shortage of competition from the powers that be.

"You get hammered as a coach, because everybody thinks it's as easy as 'going into the portal'," said Jensen. "Everybody is going into the portal. It's a whole different deal. So I'm going to try, but at the end of the day I'm going to make sure that who we have in our team and in our culture, they also want to be there because of who we are, not just for the money."

Fortunately, Jensen knows that pitch better than just about any first-year head coach, and Iowa has as much to offer in terms of culture, system and exposure as just about any program in the nation.

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Iowa's 2024-25 season has ended in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, with a record of 23-11 and 10-8 in the Big Ten.