By Susan Harman

IOWA CITY, IA – Iowa continues the gauntlet that is its late November-early December schedule withThursday night’s 8 p.m. game at Kansas State. The Wildcats rallied from a poor first half to defeat Wisconsin 77-63 last Friday. Arriving Sunday for a 2 p.m. game is Belmont, the Missouri Valley Conference favorite and an NCAA team last season.

Thanksgiving weekend finds the Hawkeyes playing Oregon State in the Phil Knight Legacy tournament in Portland. The second-round opponent will be either No. 5 UConn or Duke, which beat Iowa by 15 points a year ago. Iowa returns home to play No. 10 North Carolina State. After a trip to Wisconsin, No. 7 Iowa State comes to town Dec. 7.

That would be enough to fill a player’s head, but watching early season games on TV or a streaming service might have that same player on edge, like a precipice kind of edge.

Big Ten rival Ohio State, which was a co-champ with Iowa last season, rallied and took apart a highly ranked Tennessee team 87-75 on national TV. The Bucks then went on the road to scuttle Boston College.

This week a remodeled, poised Indiana took the measure of Tennessee in Knoxville, 79-67. The Vols are plenty skilled, but the Big Ten, with six ranked teams, so far has looked pretty scary at the top.

Apparently those impressive performances were noted.

“Me and Kate (Martin) are probably the two biggest basketball nerds on the team,” junior Caitlin Clark said. “We love watching. We watched all those good men’s teams (Tuesday) night too. We watch men’s and women’s basketball.

“We watched UConn because we might play them. We watched Iowa State, and we’ve watched Indiana and Ohio State. You’re very familiar with those teams, so it’s kind of fun to watch.”

Clark said she and Martin watch women’s basketball whenever its on ESPN and said they’ve even added a subscription to ESPN-plus to stream games.

The coach thinks that’s just fine.

“I think they need to watch more basketball,” Bluder said. “I think sometimes we don’t watch enough basketball, we don’t know the game well enough, so I love it when our players are watching the game.”

Unlike some fans, Martin and Clark said they do not mute the announcers. In fact, they try to guess who they are.

“It’s fun. I know I want to be a coach someday,” Martin said. “I love watching and scouting. I love watching film. Caitlin knows the game so well. We listen to what the announcers say.

“We’ll be like, ‘Oh that’s the one play they ran against us last year,’ or we’ll see new plays they’re running.”

Clark said sometimes they see other teams running Iowa plays.

“We’re older so we’re very familiar with teams we’ve never even played,” she said. “But even like the Tennessee game we have a connection to Tennessee because Zion Sanders, who played here, is now a GA there. It’s kind of fun rooting for her.”

Immersing themselves in basketball, having fun, and analyzing other games gives them a big picture look at their sport, unlike worried fans who watch Ohio State and Indiana obliterate Tennessee and start wringing their hands.

*Around the rim:  K-State will be unlike Iowa’s three prior opponents. “They are going to give us challenges in different ways,” Bluder said. “They like to press; we haven’t seen a lot of presses yet, so it’s an opportunity to see us grow.

“Half their shots are threes. They do a great job of driving and pitching and giving those open threes. Also they are pretty good in transition.”