By Hawk Fanatic

The stage is now set for No. 1 vs. No. 2 in the 2026 Big Ten Tournament championship game.

The No. 2 seed Iowa women’s basketball team earned a spot in the title game by defeating third-seed Michigan 59-42 on Saturday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

The Hawkeyes, who have won eight straight games, will face No. 1 seed UCLA in the Sunday’s championship game as the Bruins defeated Ohio State 72-62 in the other semifinal to advance.

UCLA is trying to win back-to-back Big Ten Tournament titles, while Iowa is trying to win the tournament for fourth time in the last five seasons.

The two teams met earlier this season on Feb. 1 in Los Angeles, but it wasn’t close as UCLA cruised to an 88-65 victory.

Saturday’s semifinal between Iowa and Michigan, meanwhile, was a defensive grinder as both teams struggled to make shots and to get open looks. But that finally changed in the fourth quarter when Iowa outscored the Wolverines 24-6 to pull away.

Iowa senior forward Hannah Stuelke scored all 13 of her points in the second half, including the first seven for Iowa to begin the fourth quarter. The Cedar Rapids native also finished with 10 rebounds and four assists, showing no effects from an elbow injury that caused her to miss two of the final three regular-season games.

Sophomore guard Taylor Stremlow also made two 3-point baskets in the fourth quarter, the second giving Iowa a 54-41 lead with 1 minute, 39 seconds left to play.

Stremlow finished with 11 points six rebounds and six assists, while sophomore point guard Chit-Chat Wright finished with 13 points, making 3-of-4 shots from three.

Sophomore center Ava Heiden also did her part as usual, finishing with 16 points.

With her team trailing 36-35 heading to the fourth quarter, Iowa head coach Jan Jensen challenged her players to pick up the intensity on defense.

“I’ll tell you when we lost the lead, I don’t get hot very often, I only get feisty when I feel like we leaned back,” Jensen said on the Big ten Network post-game interview. “This team has never leaned back all year. And I think they really answered the bell, even though Michigan was leading going into the fourth, I just told them to be us. We’ve got to get our defense back.

“And I challenged our inside kids; I said, ‘we know what to do. But we’ve got to start looking for each other.’ And they didn’t look back. They knew what they wanted and they went to get it.”

Iowa improved to 26-5 with Saturday’s win, while Michigan fell to 25-6. Both teams finished 15-3 in conference play this season.

Wright made her third three of the game to give Iowa a 45-38 lead with 6:53 left to play. Her three was part of 10-0 scoring run for Iowa that culminated with Heiden making a layup that expanded the lead to 50-38 with 4:31 remaining.

Michigan never would threaten again and fell to 0-5 against Iowa in the Big Ten Tournament.

“This team is very resilient,” said Wright, who transferred from Georgia Tech. “We don’t get too high, we don’t get too low. We knew what we had to do. We had to lock in on defense and the offense would just flow. So that’s what we did.”

Michigan entered Saturday’s game as one of the top scoring teams in country, averaging 85 points per contest.

But in two games against Iowa this season, the Wolverines combined to score just 86 points.

Iowa jumped to early leads of 9-0 and 13-2 in Saturday’s game, but then didn’t score during the final 3:01 of the first quarter, and yet, still led 13-4 heading to the second quarter as Michigan only made 2-of-16 field-goal attempts in the first quarter.

This was the same Michigan team that scored a season-low 44 points in a 62-44 loss to Iowa in February in Iowa City.

But then Michigan guard Syla Swords made two threes in the opening minute of the second quarter, trimming the deficit to 13-10 and finally giving her team some momentum on offense against the Hawkeyes.

Michigan would go on to outscore Iowa 18-15 in the second quarter, but the Hawkeyes still led 28-22 at halftime.

Heiden and Chit-Chat Wrigth led Iowa in scoring in the first half with 10 and seven points, respectively.

Iowa also assisted on eight of its 11 baskets in the first half, and had a 24-18 rebounding advantage.

The Hawkeyes only shot 40.7 percent from the field in the first half, making 11-of-27 attempts.

But Michigan was even worse, shooting just 26.5 percent from the field, making 9-of-36 attempts.

Heiden made three early baskets in the first quarter, causing Michigan to start double-teaming her in the post. That strategy had some success as Heiden only scored four points in the final 17:02 of the first half.

Iowa also committed 10 turnovers in the first half, while Michigan had eight.

Stuelke only attempted two shots in the first half and was held scoreless.

The third quarter would be a struggle for both teams offensively, but especially for Iowa, which committed eight turnovers in the third quarter alone, and only scored seven points and trailed 36-35 heading to the fourth quarter.

Iowa, which is ranked ninth nationally, would go on to dominate the eighth-ranked Wolverines in the fourth quarter, setting the stage for the No. 1 seed vs. No. 2 seed on Sunday.

The Bruins are led by 6-7 junior center Lauren Betts, who was named the Big Ten Player of the Year and the Defensive Player of the Year this season.

Jan Jensen was asked about the challenge of facing Betts and the Bruins, whose only loss this season came against Texas by a score of 76-65.

UCLA (30-1) finished 18-0 in the Big Ten this season, becoming the first team to finish undefeated in conference play since Maryland in 2014-15.

“We have a couple tweaks we’re going to try differently than the last time,” Jensen said. “We’re going to have to be at our best. We’ve got to be efficient. Our defense has got to be even better. But it’s just so hard to game plan for 6-foot-7 who’s really good.

“So I think you’ve got to blood, sweat and tears, you’ve got to get a little lucky and they probably have to be a little off. But I think the thing about being in March, I just feel so blessed that we’re the coaching staff that gets the shots. That’s all you want is a shot. I’m just so blessed.”

Sunday’s championship game will tipoff at 1:15 p.m. CST.

 

Score by period

Michigan 4 18 14 6 – 42

Iowa 13 15 7 24 – 59