By John Bohnenkamp

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Lisa Bluder wanted to wait before breaking down Iowa’s next opponent.

Bluder was still celebrating Iowa’s 94-87 win over LSU on Monday night in the NCAA tournament’s Albany 2 Regional final that sent the Hawkeyes to their second consecutive Final Four appearance, so the coach wasn’t ready to start thinking about Connecticut and Friday’s national semifinal.

“I have no idea,” Bluder said on a Zoom conference Tuesday morning. “I haven’t looked at UConn. I haven’t looked at our scout yet. I have given myself about 20 hours that I’m going to enjoy this one. When I get on that plane in about an hour, I’ll start working on UConn, but not till then.”

The Hawkeyes will play UConn in an 8:30 p.m. game on Friday, after South Carolina plays North Carolina State. It is the third Women’s Final Four appearance for Iowa.

Monday’s win was worth a long celebration. The Hawkeyes, the No. 1 seed in the regional, put together a masterful game to defeat the third-seeded Tigers, who beat them in last season’s national championship game.

Asked if the pressure Iowa has been facing all season eased with the Final Four repeat, Bluder said, “It just feels great. I mean, I don’t know if it’s less pressure. It just feels darn good to be in a Final Four again because it’s such a hard accomplishment. To go through the whole year and avoid injuries — and we have had an injury to one of our starters, and I’m hoping she’ll be back for next weekend. We’ll see. But to manage all that, to go through a season and have enough success you get a No. 1 seed, that’s really hard to do. That’s the first time that we’ve done that.

“Then you go through hosting those two games (against Holy Cross and West Virginia), then coming here. Everybody you play is just so good and you’re going against unbelievable coaches.”

If anything, Bluder said, the Hawkeyes are more than prepared for what they’ll face in Cleveland, given they have played in front of sellout crowds all season, home and away.

“I think it has done wonders for us to prepare for this opportunity,” Bluder said. “It goes back to at the end of last year, playing in the championship game, to starting this year with our Crossover at Kinnick, the football stadium having 56,000 people come out to watch us play. It’s been every single situation whether we’re home or away.

“I think being in those types of situations, kind of having a lot of media around us all year long is going to bode well for us at the Final Four where it even intensifies a little bit more.”

Bluder said last season’s trip to the Final Four in Dallas was a lesson in time management, one that she’ll take into this tournament.

“There’s so much that goes on at a Final Four as far as media obligations, celebrations, open practices,” Bluder said. “It’s hard to almost try to do all of that and your job as far as having your team prepared.

“I think we wore ourselves out last year trying to be all things to all people and do everything. So I think we’re going to be a little more selective this year on what we do and how long we’re at events.”

The Hawkeyes, who arrived in Cleveland late Tuesday afternoon, went to all of the award ceremonies for guard Caitlin Clark last season, and while Bluder expects Clark to go through similar events this time, the contingent of supporters will be smaller.

“We certainly want to be at all of Caitlin’s awards, but maybe this year we’re not going to have the whole team at every single one of them because it got to be a lot,” Bluder said. “ I need them to really lock in and rest. I think at this time of year, recovery is so important.”

Clark and her matchup with Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers will be the hot topic this weekend, but Bluder said it’s not going to be a topic of discussion with the Hawkeyes.

“You know, Paige is playing really well,” Bluder said. “She’s a great player. She was the national player of the year coming out of high school. Just a tremendous, tremendous player.

“We try not to make it be situations where it’s this person versus this person or this team versus this team. We just really try to focus on Iowa. That’s what we want to focus on. We don’t want to focus on rivalries or paybacks or anything like that. That’s just not us.”

Clark is coming off a 41-point, 12-assist game on Monday, and is averaging 32 points per game in the tournament.

Asked how the Huskies plan to stop Clark, UConn coach Geno Auriemma said, “We don’t. We don’t plan on stopping her. Because I tried calling all the other coaches that have stopped her, and none of them answered the phone. So we’re going to have to find a different way to win than stopping Caitlin Clark.”

Auriemma, whose team got to Cleveland late Tuesday, said he wasn’t worried about his team’s physical condition.

“I think most teams this time of the year are physically beat up a little bit,” he said. “I don’t know that most teams have had to play all their players,  had to play their starters 40 minutes every game like we’ve had. So there’s a lot of miles on our wheels here. So we’ll see how we hold up, but I think we’ll be fine physically.

“Mentally there’s not much you can do. You’re either ready for this moment, or you’re not. I can’t do anything to make you ready. I can help you see through some things, but if you’re the kind of kid that relishes this moment and can’t wait for this opportunity and thrives under these conditions, then you’re going to be fine. If you’re a kid that doesn’t, then you’re going to struggle. I think every kid knows what’s at stake here. I think every kid knows, hey, this is the Final Four. Everybody knows who we’re playing. It’s time to go play.”