By Susan Harman

IOWA CITY, Iowa – The Iowa women’s basketball team heads to Wisconsin for Sunday’s 1:30 p.m. game (on BTN) against the Badgers. Iowa has dominated the series 57-20 since its inception. That disparity has gotten out of hand in the last 17 years since the Hawkeyes have won 27 in a row.

This is Iowa’s longest winning streak against one opponent. Iowa previously had streaks of 21 in a row against Illinois and Michigan and 20 in a row against Minnesota. Iowa’s biggest losing streak was 17 in a row against Drake when the Bulldogs were a national power, and Vivian Stringer was just getting the Iowa program to respectability. At one point Iowa beat Drake 14 times in a row.

The streak is an anomaly of sorts compared to Iowa’s other long series, but it has come when Wisconsin has been down and Iowa has just had better personnel.

“They have a really good center in Serah Williams,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said. “Brooke Schramek has been about a four-year starter for them. Ronnie Porter is playing really good at the point guard position for them. It’s going to be a sold-out arena. I’m interested to see what percent Iowa fans and what percent Wisconsin fans.”

Williams, a 6-4 sophomore who was on the all-Big Ten freshman team a year ago, leads the team in scoring (15.6) and rebounding (8.5). Schramek, Porter and Sania Copeland lead the team in 3-point shooting.

“I think they’re pretty intense with their defense,” Bluder said. “They’re very balanced in scoring, and anytime a team is balanced like that they’re hard to defend.”

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SIDE TRIP: Iowa’s two recruits from Wisconsin, guards Taylor Stremlow of Verona and Teagan Mallegni of McFarland, play against each other Saturday night, and Bluder plans to be there. Iowa’s current players asked to go to the game, but Iowa’s compliance office put the kibosh on that idea.

“They said, ‘No, that even though they had committed (and signed) to us already, that would be an illegal activity for recruiting,’” Bluder said. “I think that would have been really nice. And the cool thing about it, Caitlin (Clark) came to us and asked, ‘Can we do this?’ I think it’s really neat when your players, especially seniors, are saying can we go do this because that would be really fun for our team to support our future teammates.”

If this is a rule in the era of NIL and the current recruiting climate, the NCAA is so out of touch as to be irrelevant.

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POSTING UP:  Hannah Stuelke drew a foul on Iowa State’s center Audi Crooks midway through the third quarter of Wednesday’s game in Ames. The ESPN crew reserved judgment until they saw a replay.

“That’s a flop,” Hall of Famer Rebecca Lobo said.

“Yes it is,” said play-by-play man Ryan Ruocco. “In the NBA Stuelke would get called.”

The game included plenty of contact in the post, but in this instance it didn’t appear Crooks extended her elbow or shoulder before Stuelke fell to the ground. The players were 10-12 feet away from the basket.

“I don’t see where they’re saying it’s a flop,” Bluder said. “I thought it was a great call. Finally, I mean, she lifts her arm and shoves hands. I mean how can that be a flop? I don’t understand the commentary on that. I thought it was a good call, and I thought Hannah got shoved.”

Crooks had her way inside, often just backpedaling slowly and moving her defender closer to the basket. Now moving a strong player like Sharon Goodman isn’t easy, but Crooks just methodically displaced the defender step by step.

When is that a foul?

“When the official decides to call that displacement,” Bluder said. “We have just as much right to that spot as she does, so it’s kind of the official’s call.”

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RIGHTING THE OFFENSE: The Hawkeyes had some trouble running their offense at ISU. A lot of it had to do with ISU’s energetic defense. But when one player, even when it’s All American Caitlin Clark, shoots half your shots, the offense isn’t doing what it’s designed to do.

“You just keep talking about it with them,” Bluder said. “People have to make themselves available for shots, and people have to take shots when they’re available, when they’re there.

“Caitlin is going to do Caitlin things and she’s going to do whatever it takes for us to win a game, and I’m very happy about that. But I thought Kate Martin did some great things down the line when she took the ball to the hole hard. Obviously, we weren’t shooting threes very well, and that’s usually what you have to do to win.”