By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – The players and coaches for the Iowa women’s basketball team are fully aware of the expectations that others have placed on them.

They understand how this upcoming season is being perceived by those outside of their inner circle in that you don’t lose arguably the greatest player in program history, and her two talented classmates, without suffering a decline. 

Iowa faces that challenge with all-everything center Megan Gustafson, point guard Tania Davis and power forward Hannah Stewart all having graduated and moved on from a team that won 29 games and advanced to the NCAA Elite Eight last season.

They leave behind three incredible legacies, especially Gustafson, who was named the Consensus National Player of the Year last season, becoming the first Big Ten player to achieve that prestigous honor.

But they also leave behind a group of players who appreciate and admire what Gustafson and her two classmates did for Iowa, but who are also eager to carve their own path and meet new goals.

“I feel like the outside is so concerned about the seniors that we lost,” said senior guard Kathleen Doyle. “But every program, every year, graduates seniors.

“Yeah, we’re going to miss them a lot. But we have a lot of belief in ourselves, and confidence in ourselves, and we’ve got a lot of pieces that could fit together really well. So we’re excited.”

The 5-foot-9 Doyle is one of the key pieces as a unanimous Preseason All-Big Ten selection.

She led Iowa in assists and steals last season, and ranked third in scoring, while earning first-team All-Big Ten accolades.

Doyle is also coming off a summer in which she helped USA Basketball win a silver medal in the Pan American Games.

"You all know she leads this team with her enthusiasm, with her love of the game, she's a competitor," Bluder said of Doyle. "She's one of the those kids that you kind of are glad you have on your team and don't want to play against her."

Doyle will combine with fellow senior Makenzie Meyer and junior Alexis Sevillian to give Iowa an experienced backcourt.

Meyer led Iowa with 62 3-point baskets last season while Sevillian started 12 games last season and made 33 treys.

Sophomore Monika Czinano has the daunting task of replacing Gustafson at center, but Czinano will have plenty of experience around her, including senior forward Amanda Ollinger, to help make it a smoother transition.

Czinano also has the trust of her head coach, who actually said on Thursday that Czinano does some things better than even Gustafson does.

Bluder paid her respects to last year’s senior class while addressing the media on Thursday. But Bluder also made it abundantly clear that the expectations haven’t changed just because the roster has changed since last season.

“This team has a mission to prove people wrong,” Bluder said. “They have an opportunity, they’ve kind of got a chip on their shoulder a little bit. We know what we lost. We lost three key ingredients, three terrific starters that had tremendous experience for our basketball team.

“But this team is not ready to throw up the white flag.”

Bluder asked one favor of the media on Thursday and that was to not compare Czinano to Gustafson.

“She’s not Megan,” Bluder said. “She’s her own person. She’s better in some things than Megan was.

“But I think that’s going to be something that really is holding her down all year if people keep trying to make that comparison because they’re two different people.”

The 6-3 Czinano was asked a lot on Thursday about the challenge of replacing a legendary player and she seemed unfazed by the task, partly due to Gustafson’s influence.

Czinano had the luxury of competing against Gustafson in practice every day last season.

“It’s helped tremendously already,” Czinano said. “In the beginning you’re in high school, you don’t get blocked a lot. You don’t go against All-Americans every day, and it was just, obviously, a learning curve. My whole freshman year I don’t think I stopped learning. And even this year, I think my whole four years I’ll never stop learning.

“But it was massively helpful to see her moves and kind of compare them to mine, and try to weave them together while not copying. It was just a whole game of seeing how Megan did things, kind of trying to say, oh, that worked really well for Megan in the Big Ten, maybe I can try to work on that. All that kind of stuff, and that started in practice.”

Iowa has added three true freshmen to the roster, and also has redshirt freshman guard Kate Martin now fully healthy after having missed last season due to a knee injury.

Bluder spoke highly of the 6-0 Martin on Thursday, saying she experts Martin to be a “major contributor” this season.

“She’s that big guard,” Bluder said. “She’s 6-foot, 6-1, can shoot threes. She rebounds well. She can take it to the hole really well and finish around there.”

The three true freshman are 5-9 guard Gabbie Marshall from Cincinnati, Ohio; 6-1 guard/forward MeKenna Warnock from Marshall, Wis., and 5-8 guard Megan Meyer, who is from Mason City and the younger sister of Makenize Meyer.

“We have several freshman that I think are really going to contribute,” Bluder said.

Iowa also has sophomore guard Tomi Taiwo, sophomore forward Logan Cook, junior center Paula Valino Ramos and junior guard Zion Sanders competing for playing time.

Cook graduated from Iowa City West High School and is the daughter of former Iowa All-American tight end Marv Cook.

“We’re kind of working on who’s going to be in that next group,” Bluder said. “With this offense, you do, in my opinion, have to substitute a little bit more because it is a little bit more physically demanding. So it lets you, hopefully, go to your bench a little bit more.”

Bluder, much like Gustafson, is coming off a season in which she also received a lot of individual acclaim, including being named the 2018-19 Naismith Coach of the Year.

But Bluder is also motivated by the doubters and she feels that the Iowa program has a reached a level where making the NCAA Tournament is always the expectation.

She pointed out on Thursday that Iowa has appeared in 26 NCAA Tournaments, which is tied with Purdue for second most among Big Ten schools – Maryland has 27 – and just five fewer than Connecticut’s 31 appearances.

“That’s an unbelievable tradition, right,” Bluder said. “And so to me it’s like, yeah that is my expectation every year. That is a goal I’m going for and I know it’s gotten harder and harder in this league. But that is my expectation.”

Iowa will face Winona State in an exhibition game on Nov. 3 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena before hosting Florida Atlantic in the season opener on Nov. 7.

Iowa also will play home games against Ivy League power Princeton on Nov. 20, Clemson on Dec. 4 and Drake on Dec. 21.

Tania Davis is a now a graduate assistant coach at Clemson.

“Maybe you don’t want your starting point guard for the last four years on an opposing team,” Bluder said of Davis. “But that’s the way it is. And it’ll be fun to welcome Tania back to Carver-Hawkeye Arena.”