Iowa women lose 86-69 at Indiana as Caitlin Clark has rare off shooting night
Iowa falls two games behind Ohio State in league standings
By Susan Harman
BLOOMINGTON, Indiana – Road games are hard. Especially against a team that has a perfect record at home in 14 games. And a team that was upset and embarrassed three days earlier in their own roadie stumble. And to a team that hadn’t lost two games in row since February of 2022.
Indiana rolled to an 86-69 victory over the Hawkeyes Thursday night, and the two teams are now each two games behind Ohio State in the regular-season standings with three games to go. But for Teri Moren’s Indiana team this was a very valuable NCAA seeding game.
“It’s huge; we had to have this one tonight to help our resume,” Moren said.
Indiana (22-4, 13-3) was the better team and didn’t really need the fuel of a poor performance at Illinois or the nearly hysterical home crowd that filled Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall, but the Hoosiers clearly enjoyed the embrace of the 17,222 fans. The home crowd delighted in taunting Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, yelling ‘airball’ the rest of the game after one of her 3-pointers didn’t draw iron. They took offense at some talking and gesturing that occurred, but Indiana’s players seemed to return the favor.
“This was a great environment to play basketball; their crowd was incredible,” Clark said. “It’s fun to play basketball here.”
Theatrics aside, the game came down to Iowa not running its offense, and its defense being something less than it was in Iowa City.
“We didn’t have an answer for Sara Scalia; she was really good tonight and give her credit,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said. “But we just didn’t play very well tonight, but again give credit to Indiana.”
Scalia, a graduate guard who shoots 44 percent from 3-point range in Big Ten play, was held to six points in Indiana’s loss in Iowa City. Thursday she scored a game-high 25 points, making 7-of-14 shots overall and all eight of her free throws.
Fifth-year center Mackenzie Holmes added 24 points and nine rebounds. Holmes had 16 in the first matchup. The Hoosiers shot 52 percent overall and 81.8 percent in the last quarter to thwart Iowa’s slim chances to catch up.
“I think the tape will tell,” Bluder said when asked about Iowa’s defense. “We did not have an answer for Scalia. She really did a great job running off screens, getting her feet set. She set her screens up really well. And then when we closed down hard she beat us off the bounce.”
Iowa scored only 11 points in the second quarter and trailed 44-33 at halftime, its largest halftime deficit all season. Indiana built a 51-33 lead before Iowa even scored in the third period. Iowa clawed back to within eight to start the fourth quarter, but again Indiana was scoring more consistently and had no trouble holding off the Hawkeyes.
Clark scored 24 points and was one assist from a triple double despite being hounded constantly. But she made just 8-of-26 shots (3-of-16 3-pointers).
“They were very physical, face-guarding me and denying the ball and threw a lot of people at me,” Clark said. “They kind of pushed me off my spots and got me out a little deeper than I wanted to be and threw a little box and one at us.
“They were just tenacious.”
“I thought our guys from the jump really, really got after it defensively,” Moren said. “I think we made everything difficult for Caitlin Clark tonight, and that’s hard to do. She’s a phenomenal player.
“We switched what we were doing defensively. We switched more ball screens than we had the first time we played them. Part of it was how hard we played, how we tried to crowd her and make sure we were maybe a little physical, you know, in her space. But the other thing we did on the dead ball we face-guarded and we went to a little bit of a triangle ourselves.”
Bluder seemed frustrated that other players didn’t contribute to the scoring. Kate Martin scored 19 and Hannah Stuelke added 10, but Stuelke had four shots blocked. In all Iowa had nine shots blocked.
“I mean, Gabbie Marshall is one for two from three. I’d take that any day,” Bluder said. “But she’s got to get more than two shots. I mean she shot 50 percent from 3-point range, so that’s pretty good. We need her to get the ball more. We had other people shoot the ball well. Addison O’Grady was 60 percent; Sydney Affolter was 66 percent. We have to have other people shoot the ball.”
Moren said IU concentrated on not letting Molly Davis repeat her 18-point scoring performance and holding Gabbie Marshall and others down. “We kept them relatively quiet, and that was the key,” she said. “That did not happen at their place.”
Bluder also said she agreed that some possessions were rushed, some were out of sorts and some were just disrupted by Indiana’s physicality.
Iowa (23-4, 12-3) had to play from behind the whole game, something it’s not used to. Clark thought that led to taking some poor shots. “I thought we maybe could have driven to the basket a little bit more,” she said.
The Hawkeyes were also out-rebounded by nine. Indiana had 13 second-chance points.
Not much time to mourn this loss. Iowa plays host to Illinois Sunday at noon.