By Hawk Fanatic

IOWA CITY, Iowa – The Iowa women’s basketball team has earned the two-seed in the Big Ten Tournament and won’t play a game until Friday’s quarterfinal round in Indianapolis.

The hope is that it will be enough time for senior forward Hannah Stuelke to recover from a right elbow injury that caused her to miss two of the final three regular-season games, though Iowa head coach Jan Jensen didn’t seem overly optimistic on Wednesday.

“It’s not as good as I’d like,” Jensen said of Stuelke’s injury on a zoom. “That’s definitely a concern moving forward.

“We don’t practice today. If you saw the injury, it was pretty banged up. With adrenaline, that’s the amazing thing about it—after that settled, the swelling and the pain—it’s definitely a concern moving forward.”

Stuelke’s elbow injury is on her dominant right arm, and right now, the best medicine is rest.

“It’s a pretty severe elbow injury,” Jensen said. “The swelling, range of motion, the pain—the length of time it probably takes for an injury like this to feel better… she has not practiced. Trying to figure out when to try practicing. If she can go, she’ll go with some of that adrenaline. It’s her strong hand, her dominant arm. We’re just trying to give it as much rest to see what it feels like. There’s a lot more than just pain tolerance. If it can’t move—it can’t move. You can do some things with it… we’re just trying to give it every minute. The positive thing is that we get to play later. It’s not season-ending.

“I know she’ll want to play. Right now, it’s everything that we are trying to see and prove with it. Just being a senior—how much fun a Big Ten Tournament is. I know that if she can play, feels like she can play, and can be helpful—she’ll play. Right now, we’re just not in the mode of practicing to even see if she can do it.”

Iowa finished the regular season 24-5 overall and 15-3 in the Big Ten, and with the 6-foot-2 Stuelke playing a key role in her third season as a starter. The Cedar Rapids native earned second-team All-Big Ten honors for the third time in her career.

Stuelke also earned the 2022-23 Sixth Player of the Year along with a pair of second-team All-Big Ten honors in her sophomore and junior seasons as a Hawkeye. This season, she leads the team and is second in the conference with 8.7 rebounds per game and is averaging 13.9 points per game.

The Cedar Rapids native became the seventh Hawkeye in program history to record 1,500-plus points and 850-plus rebounds in her career.