How will the Hawkeyes produce scoring without the seniors of last season?
By Rod Engblom
Offense has traditionally been the strong side of the game for the Iowa women’s basketball team, and that was a main factor in the team’s Sweet 16 run last season.
The offensive powerhouse trio, seniors Melissa Dixon, Bethany Doolittle, and Sam Logic, led the Hawkeyes to win after win during the season, putting up combined 817 points for the team, accounting for more than half of the team’s total scoring for the season.
The question this season is, how will the offense produce points without its three stars?
Many think that the Hawkeyes won’t be as good as they were last year.Head coach Lisa Bluder disagrees.
“Everybody is kind of counting us out,” she said.“They don’t think we’re going to be very good this year because the loss of our seniors.If you look at it on paper, I can see why people would think that, but we don’t think that, and those are the most important people to persuade, and those are the people who are wearing the jerseys.”
Even though the Hawkeyes lost three of their best scorers coming into this season, they still retain one of their top scorers of last year in junior Ally Disterhoft, who averaged 14.8 points a game, which tied with Dixon last season in points for game.
Senior Kali Peschel is also ready to play more offense this season and has worked hard over the off-season to prepare herself.
“This year, my coaches told me I’ve been expected to step up more on the offensive end of the game,” she said.“I think I’ve done a pretty good job of preparing myself for that this year, and hopefully, I can translate that into games.”
Peschel played 556 minutes and scored 173 points last season, averaging 5.1 points a game.This is expected to change this season with Peschel starting and being a co-captain with Ally Disterhoft.
With the departure of last year’s seniors, this year’s seniors (Peschel, Claire Till, and Nicole Smith) are expected to step up their game to produce more points.
“We’re also a great group of seniors, and we really just want to build off of last year,” Till said.“We had such a great run, and we did things that people think we weren’t suppose to do, and we tend to do that every year.”
Till has also prepared extensively during the off-season working on her shooting and is moving to forward, which she likes to play and feels most comfortable playing.
The freshman class also has high expectations.
New players such as Tania Davis and Megan Gustufson are expected to produce points, and they look confident.
“They just look like they belong,” Bluder said.“They don’t look like they’re questioning that they belong in an Iowa uniform; they know they belong.You have to have that confidence coming in here, and both of them do.”
Both Davis and Gustufson played in their state tournaments in high school, and Davis led her team to the state finals as a freshman and sophomore in 2012 and 2013 along with leading her team to the regional finals in 2014 and to the semifinals as a senior in 2015.Gustufson, the career leading scorer in the state of Wisconsin, led her team to conference, sectional, and regional championships her senior year.
Despite the loss of three of their top scorers from last season, the bar is still set high for the Hawks to play as well as they did last season.
“To get to the NCAA Tournament this year would be great for this team,” Peschel said “It’s an expectation for us at this point.”