By Susan Harman

ALBANY, N.Y. – It’s hard to believe now, after sinking nine 3-point shots and finishing with 41 points, that Caitlin Clark came into the Elite 8 game against LSU in a bit of a shooting slump from behind the arc.

“I probably haven’t been shooting it as good from three over the course of the last five or so games, but even if you told me that, I would still have 110 percent belief in myself and what I’ve been able to do this year,” Clark said.

That right there explains a lot about how this team played in the two Albany regional games. That unerring belief in themselves that great players have has rubbed off on her teammates.

In the six post-season games leading up to LSU, Clark was only 22-for-76 (.289), an average that’s way off what she normally shoots. Her freshman season she shot .406 behind the arc. It dipped to .332 as a sophomore, but climbed to .389 last season and .377 this season.

Clark made 3-of-8 3-pointers in the first half and 6-of-12 in the second. She made it very difficult for LSU to defend her because if they came out to get her she drove by her defender with ease.

“I thought she did a really good job staying poised and level-headed,” Kate Martin said. “I thought that was super necessary for us for this game, not letting anything get to us and just rise above it. I thought she did a good job of leading us in that aspect.”

“It could have been a highly emotional game,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said. “It could have been a lot of talking going on out there, just from what happened at the end of last year. Honestly, she put it aside. She put everything aside.”

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O’Grady in good form.  Addi O’Grady was called upon to help in the post when Hannah Stuelke got into foul trouble. She scored five points, grabbed four rebounds and blocked a shot. She ran the floor well enough to get a fast-break basket late in the decisive third quarter.

“She came in and played really confident,” Gabbie Marshall said. “We needed her; we needed those minutes. She came in and brought great energy. Even if it was a foul, she was stirred up, and she was as physical as she could be.”

Right off the bat O’Grady was confronted by 6-foot-3 All American Angel Reese.

“I think a lot of it is a mental battle with her because she’s a great player,” O’Grady said. “Super aggressive. The goal was to box her out. Stay straight up, let her shoot her shots, get the rebound. She obviously had a lot of rebounds (20) today, but we were trying our very best to limit those as much as we could.”

Associate head coach Jan Jensen said the post position has been by committee all season and coaches have told players they will go with the one who has the hot hand.

“And that is kind of hard,” she said.

It’s not like when Megan Gustafson and Monika Czinano roamed the paint, and it was clear who was second in line. Players have to be ready when called upon.

“Tonight her height (was) bothering (Reese), (she’s) pushing her off the block,” Jensen continued. “I’m happy for Addi because she’s had a tough role. And (the opponent) wasn’t just good tonight. Angel’s great. Angel’s numbers are great, and you’re not going to stop her, but I just felt Addi did enough to throw them off. And she did enough when we needed it.”

O’Grady played most of the third quarter while Stuelke was on the bench with three fouls. Iowa outscored LSU 24-13 in that quarter.

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Last year.  Players really emphasized that Iowa had turned the page from last season’s 102-85 championship-game loss. They emphasized that they had no real beef with LSU as such. They just wanted to get their team to the Final Four.

“I think many people are putting a lot of noise on last year,” Sydney Affolter said. “That’s last year. These are two totally different teams. And yes, they did win the national championship. But that has nothing to do with our team this year. And we’re so confident in each other, and we knew what we were capable of in this game.”

In last year’s title game LSU shot 54.3 percent, had 10 more baskets than Iowa and went 11-for-17 from 3-point range. On Monday, outside of the first quarter, the Tigers were toothless. In the first period they made 14-of-23 shots. Thereafter they made 20-of-65. Iowa switched out of its first-quarter zone and used a man-to-man and some other combinations after that.

“I felt after that first quarter, there’s a lot of adrenaline, I thought they can’t keep shooting that much,” Jensen said.

“We thought we would be playing a whole lot more zone than we did,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said. “They called a timeout and we tried trapping in our zone, and that really wasn’t working. After that we went to our player-to-player defense. I was so impressed with how hard our players worked in there, especially in the paint. They are a hard group to defend in the paint when you have both Angel and (Aneesah) Morrow in there.”