Iowa women will face another sellout crowd Wednesday at Minnesota
By Susan Harman
IOWA CITY, Iowa – Iowa’s game at Minnesota Wednesday is sold out and it’s the Gophers’ Senior Day, although the underclass-dominated team has precious few seniors to honor. It will be about hoopla for the home folks, while Iowa will continue to try to fine tune its offense and defense to get ready for Ohio State on Sunday and the upcoming post-season tournaments.
Ohio State has already clinched a share of the regular-season Big Ten title. If it beats underdog Michigan Wednesday night in Columbus it will win the title outright. So realistically Iowa is playing for post-season seeding in both the Big Ten and NCAA tournaments. The Hawkeyes will be either the No. 2 or No. 3 seed in the Big Ten with Indiana taking the other spot. Again, realistically given the games left, Iowa has to beat both Minnesota and Ohio State to claim the No. 2 seed.
There’s not much difference between the two seeds because both would be in the other bracket from OSU. It appears Nebraska will be the 4 seed.
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Gophers. Minnesota looks different this time around without its top scorer, Mara Braun, who is sidelined after having surgery to repair a foot injury. The Gophers still like the 3-point shot with Mallory Heyer and Grace Grocholski leading the way. But it’s been a real struggle without Braun, who averaged 17.8 points per game and required a special defensive effort. Minnesota (15-12, 5-11) has lost eight of its last nine games.
Fifth-year transfer guard Janay Sanders starts in place of Braun and averages 12.6 points as a starter.
Iowa won the first meeting between the two teams, 94-71 on Dec. 3, which is pretty close to what each team is averaging. The game tips at 8 p.m. and will be streamed on Peacock.
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Game Day. Iowa will play host to ESPN’s Game Day show on Sunday morning. The arena doors open to ticketed fans to the game at 9 a.m. and fans should sit in sections AA-B first and fill in around after that. After the first segment of the show concludes at 10:20 a.m., fans are asked to move to assigned ticketed seats for the remainder of the show.
Normal parking procedures will begin at 8 a.m. until tipoff. Visit the Iowa WBB Gameday page for more information.
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Record-breaking shot memorialized. Caitlin Clark’s 3-pointer from just above the “com” in the Mediacom logo has been celebrated with photos, videos and newspaper special sections. It propelled Clark past the existing NCAA women’s career scoring record, and she didn’t stop there, finishing with a school-record 49 points against Michigan.
Iowa celebrated that moment by applying a different kind of logo on that exact spot for the Illinois game. Clark’s No. 22 in black with gold (yellow) trim above “CLARK.” The Daily Iowan reported that the mark is 33 feet from the basket.
“I didn’t really see it until I came out for warm-ups,” Clark said. “Coach (Lisa) Bluder had told me about it. I don’t know, it’s cool, honestly it seems a little farther back than where I actually shot it from, but that’s where they claim I shot it from.
“It was funny. Gabbie (Marshall) and Kate (Martin) and Jada (Gyamfi) were trying to shoot it from there. It’s super special. I know (the shot) is something I’ll always remember.”
Clark thanked the athletic department for the honor of having untold number of sneakers trod on her name and number in the future.