By Hawk Fanatic

The Iowa women’s basketball team has responded to losing five straight games in Big Ten play by winning five straight games in Big Ten play.

Iowa defeated Nebraska 81-66 on Monday in Lincoln, Nebraska as Villanova transfer Lucy Olsen showed yet again why Iowa recruited her from the transfer portal to help move on from the Caitlin Clark era.

Olsen, a 5-foot-10 guard, scored a Hawkeye career high 32 points and she also finished with seven assists and six rebounds.

Olsen stuffed the stat sheet the same way Clark almost always did as a Hawkeye, and right now, Iowa is playing as well as any team in the Big Ten with exception to top-ranked UCLA.

Iowa never trailed in Monday’s game and led by double figures for much of the second half.

The way Monday’s game played out was much different from the first game between the two teams this season, which Nebraska won 87-84 in overtime in January in Iowa City.

In Monday’s game, Iowa controlled the momentum almost from start to finish and had a 34-18 advantage in points in the paint.

Nebraska freshman Britt Price only scored five points in Monday’s game after having scored 22 points in the first game in Iowa City.

Iowa improved to 17-7 overall and climbed above .500 in Big Ten play at 7-6 under first-year head coach Jan Jensen.

“I think it was a little bit of a revenge game, none of us were happy we lost the first time and you don’t get to play teams twice in the Big Ten too much, so I just didn’t want to lose, and for my teammates, I know how hard we’ve worked every day in practice,” Olsen said on the Big Ten Network post-game interview. ”

Iowa was hampered by foul problems in Monday’s game in the first half as centers Hannah Stuelke and Addi O’Grady both picked two fouls and spent much of the half on the bench. Stuelke would go on to finish with just four points, while O’Grady was held scoreless.

But it really didn’t matter as junior guard Taylor McCabe, who is from Nebraska, helped to pick up the scoring slack by making five 3-point baskets and scoring 17 points.

Senior guard Syd Affolter also scored 13 points and had four assists.

Iowa made 12 shots from 3-point range and held Nebraska to just seven threes, which is a drastic change from the first game this season when Nebraska made 13 threes in Iowa City.

“I’m just so proud of our group because they just kept believing and kept showing up, and I’m just so thankful,” Jan Jensen said on the Big Ten Network post-game interview. “And that defense, that’s kind of been this whole year. I really thought that’s how we could kind of make up for a little of the gap of the offense that we lost.

“And I thought tonight, that was going to be a key because when we played them the last time, we let up a lot of easy looks. So, I was really happy with our defense.”