There was a happy ending to Iowa's road game at Minnesota on Thursday night: the Hawkeyes dispatched the Gophers 68-60 on to extend their Big Ten winning streak to four games in a row. But the path to that victory was anything but easy -- and most of the difficulty came before Iowa even set foot in Williams Arena.
By pure distance, the trip to Minneapolis from Iowa City is one of Iowa's shortest road trips in the Big Ten -- just a 300 mile trek north. On Wednesday night and Thursday, a series of unfortunate events -- bad weather, mechanical issues, aviation rules, late-arriving planes, and more -- resulted in that simple road trip turning into an odyssey that spanned several on Wednesday night and a few more earlier in the day on Thursday.
"It was just one thing after the other," Iowa head coach Jan Jensen said when discussing Iowa's challenging trip to Minneapolis. Bad weather in the form of icy precipitation and a late-arriving charter plane were the first problems the Hawkeyes faced in getting to Minnesota.
"[The plane was] late arriving, about 20-30 minutes, which was the window we needed," Jensen explained. "[But] we get going, and then we're taking off, [and the pilot] hit those brakes and it was like KRRRR and I was like "whoa.' Then he says 'The runways have too much ice.'"
At that point Iowa exited the plane and returned to the airport for around 90 minutes, before getting the go-ahead to get back on the plane.
"We get on the plane again, then the propellers are frozen, [and] he can't move to the de-icing pad," Jensen said. "No problem: we'll get a tow truck. Problem: the tow truck's broken."
"Finally, we get a little thing to de-ice the [propellers], taxi over to the de-cing station, de-ice, wait, wait, wait. And then there's a ground stop -- 11:30, no way to leave. [Then] we wait 40 minutes for our bus."
All told, the Iowa team was stuck on the plane for approximately 6.5 hours on Thursday night. The hardest part of being on the plane for hours on end?
"Sleeping on the plane for so long -- seven hours," Hannah Stuelke said. What did they do for six-plus hours?
"Just sit there," Stuelke said. "We could be on our phones because the plane wasn't in the air yet."
The travel woes continued on Thursday. The plane was late to depart Cedar Rapids, preventing Iowa from even getting to Minneapolis until 12:30, just six and a half hours before tip-off at Williams Arena. That late arrival forced them to miss shootaround in The Barn, where the elevated court and unusual sight-lines make it "the most unique place," in Jensen's words.
On top of that, an abnormally rough landing at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport was yet another obstacle on Iowa's journey north.
"[The] landing was really shaky," Stuelke said.
"The worst part of today was the flight here -- [it] was awful, very scary," agreed Sydney Affolter.
"It was one of the worst [landings] I've ever, ever experienced," noted Jensen, who was taken many, many flights during her 32+ years as a basketball coach. "It's top-3 [worst]. It was just the wind or something. Some people were kinda sick, some were scared. I told them, 'This is gonna be one great memory at an alumni game, especially since we won it.'"
The Hawkeyes refused to let the travel challenges become an excuse or a source for poor play. In fact, they seemed to only add fuel to the Hawkeyes' determination to earn a fourth straight Big Ten win.
"It was hard. We were all tired, it was a lot mentally, physically," said Stuelke, who finished with a game-high 17 points and 7 rebounds and played the final six-plus minutes with four fouls (before fouling out in the final seconds). "[But] we've been through a lot of adversity this season -- injuries, whatever -- we've gone through it. As long as we stay together as a team, we can do anything."
"There was no excuses going in today, no matter what that was," added Affolter, who added 13 points and a game-high 14 rebounds. "Everyone really bought into that. I thought our team really played their roles to their best of their ability. We did everything we could to win today and stay composed."
"I'm so thankful we won," Jensen said. "They had to handle a lot, but it [wasn't] the end of the world and I just thought it was a good lesson in handling adversity, but it wasn't an easy deal."
