With a little under four minutes remaining and the Iowa women’s basketball team ahead of the No. 14 Dayton Flyers, 84-77, Sam Logic hit the deck hard and remained on the floor.
Silence enveloped Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
The thought of losing Logic to injury wasn’t feasible to the team or its captive audience.
Iowa led the Flyers by 12 points with 9:30 left in the second half, but they stormed back, and the Hawkeyes found themselves trailing by 5 with 24 seconds remaining. After freshman Ally Disterhoft sank two free throws, and the Flyers turned the ball over on the inbounds play, it was Iowa’s game to lose down by 3.
Then Theairra Taylor found Logic open near the top of the key. The shot went in, and forced overtime. What was going through her mind as the shot was released?
“Just hoping it goes in,” Logic said. “It felt good. [Dayton] had a switch confusion there. I was pretty open, and with 10 seconds left that’s all you can do.”
There are basketball teams around the country that have every play feed through one player or play books built around the team’s signature star. And while Logic may be the Hawkeyes floor general, the entire playbook doesn’t revolve around her.
The team had six players score double digit points: Bethany Doolittle with 22, Melissa Dixon with 13, Logic with 16, Taylor with 10, Kali Peschel with 12, and Ally Disterhoft with 19. Logic and Peschel also finished with double-doubles. Logic dished out 14 dimes — matching her personal best and tied a school single-game record. Peschel grabbed 14 rebounds.
“Having that balanced scoring is every coach’s dream,” Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder said.
Logic, along with dishing out dimes, scored from beyond the arc. Melissa Dixon drove into the paint. Doolittle made jumpers. Taylor did a bit of everything. The team assisted on 30 field goals, and was able to upset the Flyers as a result.
“We were down 5 with 30 seconds left,” Logic said. “A lot of people won’t have that focus, or that intensity, or even that thought that they can win … The focus of this team was outstanding.”
For Doolittle, her time spent all last season at power forward is paying off. The center scores in a variety of places: directly underneath the basket, from 14 feet, to all the way near the edge of the key.
“It’s gotten me more comfortable in more areas of the court,” Doolittle said. “I’ve obviously been comfortable down at the block most of my life, but last year, facing the basket more and understanding more of the other positions helped me see the court better.”
It just goes to show that the Hawkeyes aren’t a team built around one superstar.
They’re a talented team that relies heavily on points, rebounds, and assists from everyone in Bluder’s rotations. And two games into the season, they’ve found success doing it. They’ll need it to continue as well if the team is to keep its hopes of a seventh-straight berth in the NCAA Tournament.
“We are so hard to guard when we have numbers like that,” Bluder said about her six players scoring 92 of the team’s 97 points. “Nobody can help off any certain player. Somebody’s going to have a cold shooting night every once in a while. You’re going to have the confidence that your team will carry you through. It’s comforting to know that you don’t have to shoulder the load yourself.”
