IOWA CITY — For new Iowa point guard Lucy Olsen, navigating the NCAA Transfer Portal felt like speed dating.
"Like if I'm talking to a coach," started Olsen, in a pantomime of picking multiple phones up and down. "You could just tell the difference if you're going to click with people or not."
Fortunately for everyone, one of those coaches was then-Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder, and Olsen was on her way to visit Iowa City shortly thereafter. One team dinner later, both Olsen and the Hawkeye program were sold on each other.
"I only went on one visit because I knew that these were my people here," Olsen said. "I've been on the other side of it, where we had recruits come to Villanova and it's a little awkward, sometimes you don't know what to talk to them about. But I felt like everything [at Iowa] was so smooth."
As with the rest of the recruits, Olsen said her commitment didn't waver after Bluder's retirement in May.
"I knew [head coach Jan Jensen] was a big face of Iowa already, and she was just — awesome personality," said Olsen. "And when the whole team was staying as well, I'm like, 'all right, she's got to be pretty good.' And I'm so happy I stayed."
MORE FROM THE BEAC: New Faces, New Roles, Same Vibes
Olsen and the rest of "her people" met with the media after practice at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Tuesday, the second of two practice sessions opened to media this summer. The freshmen new faces showed plenty of potential Tuesday, with another strong day in particular for center Ava Heiden finishing around the basket, but they also looked like new faces for much of the session.
"It's been a lot of learning," said Heiden. "Like the new stuff that Iowa runs, new plays, rules [in the offense] like what the post can and can't do, or when they can or can't post up."
Indeed, head coach Jan Jensen's interruptions for instruction during Tuesday's practice were equal parts constructive and frequent, especially once the team started running five-on-five drills. The training wheels are most certainly still on the motion offense, with the veterans also adjusting to new roles in a post-Caitlin Clark world, but the process has been productive already.
"We're still trying to find the flow, still learning how to play with each other a little bit," said Olsen. "We've already come a long way from the beginning of the summer. I remember the first time we played pickup together, me and Syd [Affolter] were running into each other all the time. Like, we had such similar mindsets that we were doing the same thing."
For a dynamic scorer like Olsen, few programs could have offered a more tantalizing place to transfer than Iowa, the epicenter of Caitlin Clark's burgeoning stardom and — rather indisputably — the most entertaining college basketball program in America.
"I love how fast they play on the court," said Olsen. "They shoot a lot of threes, have a lot of freedom in the offense. And then everyone works super hard. I think that was super attractive."
Indeed, if anyone thought Iowa's standards of success would drop after Clark's ascent to the WNBA, nobody gave that memo to Olsen.
"I want to win games — I hate losing," Olsen said with a laugh when asked about her season goals. "Big Ten championship, make a run into March Madness. Yeah, I just like to win."
With a whole new group of teammates and one year to meet that goal of a Big Ten Championship, Olsen's challenge is steep (on paper). That challenge doesn't include stepping into Clark's Nikes, though — just her standards.
"There's not going to be another Caitlin Clark," said Olsen. "She's definitely paved the way for how hard you should work, what expectations there are here and what type of program this is."
