A 14-1 run by Tennessee doomed the Hawkeyes late as the Volunteers pulled away, 78-68, in the inaugural Women's Champion's Classic at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Iowa led 67-64 with 4:38 left in the game before Tennessee's defense keyed the decisive run, as Iowa finished with 30 turnovers in the loss.
"I told the team, you're never going to win with 30 turnovers," said head coach Jan Jensen after the game. "But it was a one-possession game with three minutes left. And we had 27."
The loss is Iowa's first of the season and of the Jensen era; the Hawkeyes will bring an 8-1 record to Tuesday's Cy-Hawk Game.
THE DEEP THREE
1. Under Pressure. Any hope for Lucy Olsen being the panacea for Iowa's ball-control woes — and for opponents to ease up their press — was quickly dashed Saturday night, as Tennessee's press forced turnovers on Iowa's first three possessions.
That number climbed to nine by the end of the first quarter, 18 by halftime and the dreaded 30 by the end of the game. Iowa hasn't won a game with even 25+ turnovers since at least 2009.
"I think the only thing I'm disappointed about is this team is a lot better than they showed," said Jensen. "I tried like heck to get them ready for the press, and I obviously failed at that as a coach."
Perhaps most concerning: the turnovers were a full-team affair, with every starter registering at least four turnovers (Syd Affolter led all with seven, including three in the fourth quarter). Tennessee generated 18 steals, both in press and halfcourt situations, and it got 12 more dead-ball turnovers from the positively flummoxed Hawkeyes.
Credit has to go to the deep, athletic, high-pressure Lady Volunteers, who pressed every bit as much as Iowa expected them to: constantly. They're built for this sort of tenacious defense, and they were prepared for giving Iowa hell Saturday.
"This isn't any surprise," said Jensen. "Tennessee's an SEC team with tremendous athletes."
Less prepared were the Hawkeyes, and the culprit was a familiar one — or, at least, one Jensen had warned fans about for months.
Saturday's game looked like the sum of all fears after the sheer lack of time the team has been able to practice together. That's especially true in a backcourt where (deep breath) Olsen transferred in over the spring, true freshman Aaliyah Guyton was only fully cleared from knee surgery two weeks ago and the rest of the incumbents played substantially different roles with Clark on the floor.
And yet the team still competed hard. If it played Tennessee 100 times it probably wins a few dozen. Thirty turnovers are a scary stat, but this is a classic December loss; the key is making sure it's not still happening in February or beyond.
"Tonight, I don't think is indicative of the type of offense we can play, but I will tell you we're not where we can be or we're going to be," said Jensen. "[The offense] gets better with time. It's a lot of reads. But tonight, I wouldn't give us a passing grade with reads."
2. Legs, and how to use them. Tennessee's 14-1 run came at the end of a fourth quarter in which the rotation-heavy Volunteers made 22 total substitutions. Iowa, meanwhile, ran with the starters for the entire last period until the last 38 seconds, when Taylor McCabe came in amid some late-game defensive shuffling. The game was already effectively over.
Was Iowa dealing with dead legs by the end of the game? No, said Jensen — but they were still worn out from the press.
"I don't think physically it was, but it was mentally," said Jensen. "The pressure will get to you. It weighs on the mind."
True to Jensen's statement, Iowa's legs didn't look tired down the stretch, and the team had used its bench for 39 of its 150 minutes through three quarters, a light-but-healthy 26% of total minutes at that point.
In those 39 minutes of bench action, though, came seven turnovers — including five for the freshman guard trio of Aaliyah Guyton, Taylor Stremlow and Teagan Mallegni in 19 minutes.
"[Tennessee] is going to make you win ugly, and is probably going to make you lose ugly, unless you have some tremendous depth of ball-handlers," said Jensen. "That's just one thing right now, with a relatively young team, in the sense of minutes played in pressure situations. Kylie and Syd, they didn't play a whole lot of minutes (last year), and now I'm asking them to break press and handle it."
There's no reason to believe Jensen was wrong about her team's conditioning; the Hawkeyes didn't look gassed or incapable of getting their shots over the rim.
However: there's no denying the Vols' legs were fresher, and that some bench minutes could have alleviated that mental fatigue — or kept it from creeping in while Iowa still had a lead to protect late. Who knows? Maybe that idea's got... legs.
3. Life in marvelous times. In a strange way, Saturday's loss didn't ever seem like a question of Iowa's legitimacy; it seemed like a statement of it. For all 40 minutes, Iowa belonged on that court, like everyone expected them to.
In fact, let's just say it all out: Iowa women's basketball just played Tennessee, on prime-time national television, at one of the sport's most prestigious arenas. And Fox treated the whole thing like absolute gold, with Iowa's presence there as much a part of the draw as Tennessee's.
Imagine reading that 30 years ago. Or 20 years ago. Hell, 10.
But this is the new normal for the team — a team that recruits for five-stars now, a team that was more than happy to hitch a ride on Caitlin Clark's comet, sure, but whose culture was strong enough for that ride and the heights she helped it reach.
Not only has Iowa's WBB program maintained a leap of some quanta up in the post-CC era, the sport has as well. Both are encouraging signs to see. Nowhere in the coverage was there any wink or nod at the novelty of anything involved, or an Iowa playing a Tennessee, or a large crowd for a neutral-site women's game in December. Clark barely came up.
It's easy to take the absence of something for granted, especially everything mentioned above, but some appreciation seems appropriate. The new normal won't be the same as the Clark years or any that came before, but it seems all right.
