By Hawk Fanatic

As it turns out, maybe the biggest challenge for the Iowa women’s basketball team with its road game at Minnesota was getting there.

Iowa didn’t arrive in Minneapolis until early Thursday afternoon because of its flight being delayed by over eight hours due to icy weather conditions.

But that had little effect as the surging Hawkeyes never trailed in Thursday’s game and left Williams Arena with a much-needed 68-60 victory.

Iowa has now won four games in a row and climbed back to .500 in Big Ten play at 6-6.

There was concern about a letdown with Iowa having upset then fourth-ranked USC 76-69 in its previous game last Sunday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Because so much energy and emotion was spent on that game, which also featured Caitlin Clark’s jersey retirement afterwards, it was reasonable to think that Iowa might come out flat against the Gophers.

But that was hardly the case as Iowa bolted to a double-digit lead in the first quarter, and then withstood a Gopher rally in the second half.

The score was even at 51-51 with 4 minutes, 33 seconds left in the fourth quarter, but then Iowa scored five straight points and led the rest of the way.

Junior forward Hannah Stuelke led four Iowa players in double figures with 17 points before fouling out in the fourth quarter, while senior guard Syd Affolter grabbed 14 rebounds and scored 13 points.

Stuelke, a Cedar Rapids native, also surpassed 1,000 career points in Thursday’s game.

“I’m just thankful because we had a little bit of adversity getting here, but that is such a great example for life,” Iowa head coach Jan Jensen said on the Big Ten Network post-game interview. “So we talked about last night, we got delayed about eight hours and slept in Cedar Rapids, blah, blah blah.

“And getting here, I said no one cares. That’s how it is in life so you’ve just got to find a way. And I thought this was two teams that really wanted to find a way and we just kept grinding it out.’

All four of the Iowa players that scored in double figures were upper-classmen including three seniors.

“A lot of these seniors, we’ve been through these games. we’ve been in close situations in the fourth quarter and I think we really just stayed calm and that was really important,” Affolter said.