By Susan Harman

IOWA CITY, Iowa – The team was dressed in matching black sweats in front of a giant TV screen. A small girl did cartwheels in the corner. The Big Ten tournament trophy was front and center in anticipation of a live shot on ESPN. Media members wandered around and photographers tried to get in position to capture the moment of the reveal as if it were a home remodeling show on HGTV.

Finally Iowa popped up as a No. 2 seed in one of the Seattle regionals, and the relatively calm bunch of Hawkeyes leaped in the air and let out a whoop. The first-round opponent Friday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena is Southland Conference champion Southeastern Louisiana (21-9), with Florida State and Georgia playing in the other first-round game.

Georgia is coached by former Hawkeye Katie Abrahamson, who graduated from Cedar Rapids Washington, as did Iowa’s Hannah Stuelke. The winners play Sunday.

“We believe we belong with the best, and it’s going to take beating some really good teams to reach our goal,” Iowa junior Caitlin Clark said.

The relative lack of emotion shown by players likely is a product of the team’s experience with this procedure and the lack of drama in terms of home court and seeding. Players did react when Stanford was named the fourth No. 1 seed (South Carolina, Indiana, Virginia Tech are the others) but not much.

“It would have been cool. I thought we did a lot to prove ourselves, especially in the second half of the year when we played our best basketball,” Clark said.

“We knew we were going to be a one or a two,” Iowa super senior Monika Czinano said. “Me, personally, I didn’t really care.

This will be Czinano’s last group NCAA reveal. She wasn’t nostalgic but appreciative.

“Seeing some of those teams and knowing that this is the first time they’ve ever done it, but being in a program that I get to do this every year makes me feel really lucky and really blessed,” she said.

Southeastern Louisiana University has 14,300 students in Hammond, La. It is the alma mater of television personality and Hall of Famer Robin Roberts. This is the first NCAA Tournament berth for the school, which was a small school power in the mid-1970’s.

 “This is a huge moment for our program, our university and our community,” Southeastern coach Ayla Guzzardo said. “We’re a tough team, and we’re excited to have this opportunity. We’ll go into the NCAA Tournament with a good plan and our team will buy into it fully, which is all you can ask.”

The Lions won the regular-season title but no doubt had to win the conference tournament to earn a spot in the NCAA. Hailey Giaratano banked in the game-winning shot with less than a second to play in the semifinal to beat Texas A&M Commerce by two, and the Lions beat Lamar 66-57 to earn the automatic bid.

Giaratano, a 5-11 junior, averages 12.4 points and 35 percent from 3-point range. Alexius Horne, a 5-9 junior, averages 12 points, but was hurt in the tournament semifinal and didn’t play in the final. Taylor Bell, a 5-11 sophomore, averages 8.5 points but scored a career-best 22 in the tourney final.

The Lions average 62.7 points per game and hold opponents to 54.5 points. As a team the Lions shoot 30 percent from 3-point range. The majority of their players are from Louisiana.

Natalie Kelly is a 6-foot-3 transfer from Auburn and leads the team in blocked shots.

Guzzardo, a native of Hammond, is in her sixth season with the Lions. She was an assistant at Akron, her alma mater, before returning home as an assistant at Southeastern. The team has shown consistent improvement from eight wins her first year to 21 this year.

The Lions played a good non-conference schedule with losses to Utah, San Diego State, LSU and Alabama.