Iowa women blow double-digit lead in 50-49 loss at Oregon
Iowa's losing streak grows to five straight games
By Hawk Fanatic
The Iowa women’s basketball team entered Sunday’s game at Oregon with a rare four-game losing streak, with most of its veteran players struggling and without All-Big Ten junior forward Hannah Stuelke.
And yet, despite all that adversity Iowa never trailed in the first three quarters, and led by as many as 15 points, but still couldn’t finish the job as Oregon outscored Iowa 28-17 in the second half, including 15-8 in the fourth quarter, and escaped with a 50-49 win on its home floor in Eugene, Oregon.
Iowa went more than nine minutes without scoring in the second half, but still had a chance at the end, only to fall short.
Again.
Iowa fell to 2-6 in the Big Ten and now faces the prospect of playing at Washington without Stuelke, who is listed as day-to-day after suffering a concussion late in Thursday’s overtime loss to Nebraska.
The Des Moines Register reported that Stuelke did not travel with the team to the Pacific Northwest, and if she were medically cleared to play against Washington on Wednesday, she would have to fly commercially.
The fact that Iowa only scored 17 points in the second half of Sunday’s loss is a dramatic shift from how the Iowa women’s basketball team has played for years, especially in each of the past two seasons with all-everything point guard Caitlin Clark leading the way to back-to-back NCAA runner-up finishes.
Iowa became a national power during Clark’s four seasons, mostly because of the high-powered offense, which first-year head coach Jan Jensen played a significant role in developing as the top assistant under Lisa Bluder, who retired as the Iowa head coach this past May.
Jensen obviously knows what it takes to excel on offense, but moving on without Clark, and without Clark’s talented supporting cast, has so far been a deflating and frustrating experience.
Iowa has now lost five games in a row, which equals its number of losses from last season.
In addition to only scoring 49 points in Sunday’s loss, Iowa also committed 19 turnovers, continuing a troublesome trend in its seven losses this season.
Iowa also had no player score more than 10 points.
“It wasn’t really riveting basketball with the scores in the third quarter and fourth quarter, especially with our offensive production,” Jensen said on the Learfield post-game radio show. “We’re just really lacking more of a punch on that offensive side.”
With Clark running the show, it was easy to take scoring for granted.
She averaged more than 30 points per game as a senior and finished her career as the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer with 3,951 points.
Clark made logos threes, and she fed her teammates in transition for easy layups with fascinating passes.
It was a joy to watch, but Clark has moved on to the WNBA and life without her has turned into a major struggle.
Jensen said her team became passive as the lead continued to shrink in Sunday’s game, and that’s understandable with Iowa still struggling to adjust to not having Clark on the floor.
Iowa still has to play national powers USC and UCLA, albeit it at home, and Ohio State on the road, so the remaining schedule offers little mercy.
But up next is Washington on Wednesday in Seattle, and that is all that matters right now.
Iowa just has to win a game to have a reason to feel good again.
Senior guard Syd Affolter talked on the post-game radio show about the importance of playing a full 40 minutes, and that’s what this loss ultimately came down to in the end.
Iowa just couldn’t finish the job.
“I think just not being hesitant, a full game of forty minutes, it’s not twenty, it’s not thirty, and I think that’s kind of been true for the games that we’ve lost this year,” Affolter said. “So we’ve got to put together a full forty minutes, and we’ve got to keep trusting each other and lean into that confidence.”
Affolter certainly did her part in trying to end what is now a five-game losing streak as she led Iowa with 15 rebounds and scored 10 points.
Senior center Addi O’Grady also scored 10 points, but just two in the second half, while Heiden finished with eight points and five rebounds in her trip back home.
O’Grady also missed a potential game-winning shot in the closing seconds, while graduate guard Lucy Olsen continued to struggle with her shooting, making just 2-of-12 shots from the field.
The sobering reality coming off this latest loss is that Iowa’s season is in danger of slipping away just like Sunday’s game slipped away from the Hawkeyes.
Iowa bolted to a 10-0 lead as the center combination of senior Addi O’Grady and freshman and Oregon native Ava Heiden were a combined 4-of-4 from the field.
Iowa made five of its first six shots, while Oregon missed its first six shots.
Oregon finally scored on a 3-point basket with 2 minutes, 53 seconds left in the first quarter, trimming the deficit to 11-3.
Iowa led 17-7 after the first quarter as the Ducks only made 3-of-12 shots from the field and committed five turnovers in the quarter.
Iowa expanded the lead to 27-12 on a basket by Olsen with 7:39 left in the second quarter.
But then Oregon closed the second quarter on a 10-5 scoring run, cutting Iowa’s lead to 32-22 at halftime.
All five of Iowa’s starters scored from three to eight points in the first half, led by O’Grady with eight points on 5-of-7 shooting from the field, while freshman point guard Aaliyah Guyton scored six points off the bench.
Iowa also had a 23-13 rebounding advantage in the first half.
The downside to the first half, besides letting Oregon rally late in the second quarter, was that Iowa only shot 43.3 percent from the field and had eight turnovers.
But to be without arguably your best player on the road, and to still lead by 10 points heading to the third quarter was about as good as anything that has happened with this Iowa team recently.
The game was there for the taking. But Oregon chipped away at the deficit throughout the second half and then hung on at the wire, leaving Jensen searching for answers, and for offense.