By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Just by transferring from Villanova to Iowa, Lucy Olsen has shown both courage and confidence.

The Pennsylvania native has shown that she isn’t afraid to face a challenge because that is certainly what she has faced in her only season as a member of the Iowa women’s basketball team.

Iowa figured to have some peaks and valleys as it moved on from the unprecedented success that occurred with Caitlin Clark as the do-everything starting point guard over the past four seasons.

Clark led Iowa to NCAA runner-up finishes in each of the past two seasons and she finished her legendary career as the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer with 3,951 points.

Clark would go on to be the first pick in the 2024 WNBA draft and was named WNBA Rookie of Year and a WNBA first-team all-league selection.

You would be hard pressed to find a more popular athlete, man or women, than Caitlin Clark, whose Iowa jersey No. 22 was retired following Iowa’s 76-69 victory over then-fourth ranked USC on Feb. 2 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Few can pack an arena like Caitlin Clark, but Lucy Olsen was fully aware of that when she decided to transfer to Iowa after having played her first three seasons for Villanova, where she finished third in the country in scoring last season with a 23.3 per-game average.

Olsen knew that she would be following a homegrown Hawkeye legend and would even play the same position, and a similar role, as a scoring point guard.

And yet, she hasn’t flinched or crumbled under the pressure.

Olsen has struggled at times, especially during Iowa’s five-game losing streak in January.

But she has just kept competing and doing whatever she can to help Iowa win games.

She makes no excuses when she struggles and she tries to deflect the praise when she plays well.

And right now, she’s playing her best as a Hawkeye, which was apparent in Monday’s 81-66 win at Nebraska as the 5-foot-10 Olsen scored a Hawkeye high 32 points. She also had six rebounds and seven assists while helping Iowa win its fifth straight game.

“I just didn’t want to lose, and for my teammates, I know how hard we’ve worked every day in practice, Olsen said. “So I just wanted to come out and see what would happen.”

What happened is that Olsen dominated the game much the same way Clark used to dominate games as a Hawkeye. Olsen’s stat line against Nebraska was similar to the numbers that Clark used to record on a regular basis.

First-year Iowa head coach Jan Jensen has been careful not to compare Olsen to Clark because nobody really compares to Caitlin Clark on the offensive end.

Olsen and Clark also have different playing styles with Olsen more of a mid-range scorer, while Clark became famous for making logo threes, and for her incredible passing skills.

Their on-the-court demeanor is also different as Clark shows far more emotion, and will let the officials know when she disagrees with a call, while Olsen plays almost always with a smile on her face and rarely says anything to the officials besides maybe hello.

But what they both have in common is a burning desire to compete and to win, and in Olsen’s case, that was in full display in the win at Nebraska.

“She’s a difference maker,” Jan Jensen said. “And if we can keep her playing that free, when she plays free like that, she’s really a tremendous player. And it gives us so much confidence and it kind of sets the tone.”

Olsen seems to have fit perfectly with the Iowa’s culture.

She always seems to be smiling and her teammates have embraced her from the moment she arrived.

Olsen and her team both could have unraveled as the losses started to mount in January, along with the criticism.

The critics and naysayers started saying that Jensen was maybe in over her head as Lisa Bluder’s replacement, while Olsen was supposedly incapable of being Iowa’s go-to star player on offense.

Those same critics have since been silenced by Iowa winning five straight game and by Olsen scoring at least 14 points in each of the five games.

Olsen has made 41-of-55 field-goal attempts over the last five games, including 10 of 21 shots from 3-point range.

Iowa, which faces Rutgers on Thursday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, is also 9-1 in games in which Olsen has had six or more assists.

Part of being a star player is playing your best when it matters the most, and that’s what Olsen is doing right now.

She is showing why Jensen and former Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder started recruiting Olsen from the transfer portal because they both knew that Iowa needed help after losing Clark and Clark’s talented supporting cast.

Bluder then retired shortly after Olsen had committed to Iowa, but Olsen also had built a relationship with Jensen, and with some of the Iowa players and that convinced Olsen to stick with Hawkeyes.

Iowa fans are certainly fortunate that she did because it’s hard to imagine this team having this kind of success without her.

Iowa needed a proven scorer to help make up for all the points that were lost from last season’s team, and Olsen has met that challenge.

Olsen said that watching Clark’s rise to stardom as a Hawkeye is part of what convinced Olsen to be a Hawkeye.

Instead of being intimidated by or jealous of what Clark accomplished as a Hawkeye, Olsen wanted to be a part of what Clark has helped to build.

And right now, Lucy Olsen is a huge part of it.