Mike Hlas

IOWA CITY, Iowa – Iowa knows what a No. 2-seed in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament is supposed to look like, and it wasn’t the Hawkeyes of 2026.

Kudos to the Hawkeyes for winning 27 games, for going 15-3 and tying for second-place in the Big Ten, for winning its way to the league’s conference-championship game, and for earning a No. 2 seed in the big tournament.

But this wasn’t the 2-seed Iowa team of 2023 that dissected its NCAA opposition on the way to the Final Four. This was a group that overachieved given its youth and whatever it lacked to be a postseason force. This team couldn’t make shots Monday afternoon in its own Carver-Hawkeye Arena safe place, and couldn’t put away a 10-seed in Virginia that kept coming back, coming back, coming back.

In the second overtime of an exhausting second-round NCAA contest, it was the Hoos of Charlottesville who were sharper and more efficient, and it was the Hoos that advanced to the Sweet 16 in Sacramento with an 83-75 loss that deflated their opponent and a crazy-loud sellout crowd.

Iowa had 21 more shots than Virginia, but you have to make those shots. The Hawkeyes were 37 percent from the field, 5-of-29 from 3-point, and a dismal 8-of-16 from the foul line. Ballgame. Season.

Look, when UCLA beat Iowa 96-45 in the Big Ten title game, there were no illusions the Hawkeyes were a danger to top-seed South Carolina in their regional. What Hawkeyeland realistically hoped for was for an NCAA sweep at home, maybe you pick off your Sweet 16 foe in a coin-flip regional semifinal, and then you try to tough fight, and you try to compete with the mighty Gamecocks and see what happens.

Instead, the tank emptied before it was wheels up to California. Virginia’s team showed a season’s worth of heart and soul in five days here. It beat Arizona State by two points in a First Four game, dropped favored Georgia in overtime, then went five minutes longer two days later to take out the Hawkeyes. It was a fabulous display of nerve and relentlessness.

For Iowa, it was the first time it had lost to a lower seed in this event over the last five years. And it was the last we’ll see here of senior forward Hannah Stuelke and guard Kylie Feuerbach, two women who did so much to help the Hawkeyes be so good in the 2020s.

Stuelke played 49 minutes Monday, had a career-high 19 rebounds, 6 assists, 15 points. She played in 136 games over four years, averaged 14 points as a sophomore for a national runner-up, had 1,565 points and 910 rebounds, and will be remembered for something else: The way she was. After a bitterly disappointing finish to her career here, she took time to sign autographs for kids on her way to a somber dressing room. It was completely in character.

She came from Cedar Rapids, learned to fit in with the ultra-demanding Caitlin Clark, and made a place for herself on Iowa’s roster. An important place.

“I’m just really thankful for the experience,” Stuelke said after the game. “Obviously, it’s sad. These are my best friends.

“It’s been a fun ride. There have been highs and lows, and I’m thankful for the highs.”

Sophomore center Ava Heiden, who scored 26 points Monday and 55 over two NCAA games, called Stuelke “a fierce lover and a fierce leader. She’s so fun to play with. She brings so much joy and love to this team.”

Feuerbach is a sixth-year senior. She played one season at Iowa State, transferred to Iowa, sat out her third season with an injury, then became a valued sub in Iowa’s glorious 2024 ride back to the national-championship game. She started 64 games over the last two seasons. Her tireless defense stymied star Virginia guard Kymora Johnson for most of the game despite Johnson’s 26 points.

Feuerbach made the Big Ten’s All-Defensive team this season, prompting Clark to say this on social media: “Roomie was doing the defense part for both of us for YEARS.”

Feuerbach loved being part of this rock-star type atmosphere that Iowa women’s basketball became enough to go full-tilt for a sixth year.

“Oh man,” Feuerbach said about her time here. “I would say it’s been surreal. It would be impossible to list off everything right now, just the experiences that I’ve been able to have.

“This moment really is hard, but then you can look back on all the highs that we’ve had, and I think they surpass everything else. But this is a really hard moment.”

The two seniors’ careers could have gone another week longer, and would have had another free throw or 3-pointer gone in the basket in the first 45 minutes of Monday’s game. And, had Virginia not refused to buckle in the face of the Hawkeyes and the wall of human sound coming from the Carver customers.

But this is sports, and sometimes the difference between advancing and suddenly crashing to an end is fiber optic-thin. The Iowa men run a perfect final play, swish their final shot, and stun Florida on Sunday. The Hawkeye women couldn’t create a late-game shining moment in regulation or the first overtime, and must call it a season.

It was a 27-7 year from an Iowa team that was No. 21 in the preseason Top 25 and wasn’t picked to finish in the Big Ten’s top five. If you know Hawkeye fans that can’t find enduring pleasure from that, pity them.