It’s been awhile since the Iowa women’s basketball team has won a game — let alone win in Mackey Arena.
Iowa’s last win came against Michigan on Jan. 27, and their last win in West Lafayette came in February 1998.
Both losing streaks ended Sunday afternoon, when the Hawkeyes beat the Boilermakers, 72-52. This earned Iowa its seventh win against a ranked opponent this season.
“We kept believing,” head coach Lisa Bluder said in a release. “We kept working hard every single day in practice. They kept coming in confident, focused, and this is the result today. I’m so happy for them to have the opportunity to see that hard work and staying optimistic works. It’s such a great life lesson for them.”
Samantha Logic, the Big Ten’s leader in assists, put passing on the back burner and took the ball to the paint. Logic scored a career-high 26 points on 10-of-13 shooting. Sophomore Melissa Dixon continued her hot-streak off the bench, adding 10 points of her own.
As the Hawkeyes gained two 11-point leads in the second half, the Boilermakers worked hard to force comebacks. They cut Iowa’s lead to 6 twice in the second half, but Logic would have nothing of it.
The sophomore responded each time the 18th-ranked Boilermakers inched closer to the Hawkeyes by dominating the defense. She cut through numerous defenders for lay-ups and found her way to the charity stripe to make 4-of-5 free throws. Her team scored 36 points in the paint, compared with just 24 for Purdue.
“Before the Penn State game, [Lisa] asked me to be a little more aggressive,” Logic said in a release. “We started the game with a post-up, then I had to drive really quick and they collapsed on Jaime [Printy], so a couple of the 3s were just wide-open 3s — my teammates got me the ball. We transitioned really well to get some easy buckets, so that gets everyone going.”
Before Logic went off, Theairra Taylor was the story of the game. The junior scored 11 points in the first half on her way to the second double-double of her career, finishing with 15 points and 11 rebounds. She and Logic combined to score 41 of the team’s 72 points, going 17-of-26 together.
“I just wasn’t thinking tonight — I was just playing,” Taylor said in a release. “I knew we had to do something different, something wasn’t working, so I had to put in a little more effort out there.”
Defensively, the team also thrived, holding Purdue to 31 percent shooting, and the Hawks blocked 10 shots. Senior Morgan Johnson was responsible for 5 blocks, Bethany Doolittle for 3, and Logic and Jaime Printy earned 1 apiece.
The Black and Gold stifled Purdue’s leading scorer — Courtney Moses, who averages 13.5 points per contest, was held without a basket on seven shots in the afternoon.
Johnson also set another record before the ball even tipped. Her spot in Sunday’s starting lineup earned her first place for career starts at Iowa with 122.
In a game that Iowa desperately needed — the Hawkeyes snapped a five-game losing streak with the victory — the head coach said that, without the play of her point guard, it might not have been possible.
“I’ll take a duplicate of this [performance] anytime,” Bluder said of Logic in a release. “I thought she was outstanding today. I don’t know of many other point guards in the Big Ten or around the country that can guard a power forward or center like Sam Logic can. She can guard anybody on the floor, and we need that right now.
“Those might be pretty big words, but I have a lot of confidence in her.”
