By Susan Harman

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Iowa’s A-1 offense showed up Sunday, putting up 101 points with 17 3-pointers and an overall 50 percent shooting average. It’s a good thing it did because Illinois scored 85 points, the most it has scored in Iowa City since 1998, with all five starters scoring in double figures.

“Really happy with the way we shot the ball tonight and from a variety of people,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said.

Four of Iowa’s starters scored in double figures and reserves Kylie Feuerbach and Sydney Affolter were nearly there too.

“That’s what we have to be,” Bluder said. “We were just running our offense, truly. We pushed the ball well in transition. I just think people stepped up and made shots. We want to be at high assists, and we had 28 today. I mean, there was some beautiful passing out there.

“Caitlin’s (Clark) passes to the posts were amazing in the first half, and in the second half such unselfish play, as we reverse the ball and got a wide-open layup for Hannah (Stuelke) on the other side. That’s the basketball we like to see.”

That was noticeably missing Thursday in the loss at Indiana in which the Hawkeyes were held to 69 points and never really ran their offense with any success.

But this was vintage Bluderball for most of the game. Clark had a triple double despite a cold shooting game (6-of-18). She finished with 24 points, a team-high 15 rebounds and 10 assists. Stuelke had 20 points and nine rebounds. Molly Davis finished with 17 points and five assists, and Kate Martin had 13 points, six rebounds and four assists.

But wait, that’s not all. Iowa got 25 points off the bench. Feuerbach had nine on three 3-pointers. Affolter had eight points, five rebounds and four assists. Taylor McCabe had two 3-pointers for six points.

Non-Clark players took 54 of Iowa’s 72 shots and made 30 of them.

“Again, we’ve needed this,” Bluder said. “We want this to happen. We want people to step up because it makes Caitlin’s job easier. When other people are doing what they should be doing it makes her job so much easier, and we are more enjoyable to watch.”

One of the best examples of the offensive success came at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Iowa scored on seven of its first eight possessions. It had threes from three different sources, a couple Stuelke baskets and a one-woman fastbreak by Davis after she stole the ball at midcourt.

Clark noted that the production from other sources will open up the middle eventually, but Illinois chose to stick with their lane-clogging defense.

“They just collapsed on every single drive tonight,” she said. “It was kind of hard for me to get my feet in the paint and get good looks at the rim, and they didn’t really adjust to that it didn’t seem as we shot the ball. We made 17 threes, and it was kind of like they were going to live with that and make us prove ourselves from outside.”

Iowa’s 17 threes tied the Carver-Hawkeye Arena record for women’s basketball.

Iowa needed this game after Thursday’s performance. It has Minnesota on the road Wednesday and finishes the regular season on Sunday at noon against Big Ten-leading Ohio State.

“Coming back here you want to have a really good performance and feel really great about yourself going into the last week,” Clark said. “I thought that’s exactly what we did. We moved the ball. We shared the ball. The amount of shots we took was evenly distributed pretty well.”

Iowa played a zone against Illinois, which doesn’t have the 3-point threats that Indiana had. It was still hard to keep Makira Cook, Genesis Bryant and Adalia McKenzie from scoring on the dribble drive. Kendall Bostic grabbed a game-high 17 rebounds for the Illini.

ESPN College Game Day will visit campus next Sunday for the game with the Buckeyes, and Bluder was pumped about the opportunity.

“It’s exciting for us to host two years in a row,” she said. “I think we’re going to have an unbelievable atmosphere for that.” Details to be announced later.

Iowa improved to 24-4 overall and 13-3 in the Big Ten. Illinois is 13-13, 7-9.