By Jake Mosbach
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After the Hawkeye women’s basketball was unable to hold on to a 13-point halftime lead against No. 18 Michigan State on Jan. 16, spirits could have been low. Team morale could have suffered.
But that’s not the way that head coach Lisa Bluder’s Hawkeyes (13-5, 3-3 Big Ten) have been taught.
Instead, the team immediately shifted its focus to Penn State (6-11, 1-5 Big Ten), which will come to Carver-Hawkeye today to take on the Hawks at 7 p.m. The Nittany Lions enter the contest on the heels of a 91-87 loss at home against Michigan.
Despite the Lions’ underwhelming record, Bluder and her team know just how challenging they will be.
“This is a team that is very good; they’re shooting the ball better than they did last year, and they can turn it up at any time,” Bluder said. “They’re also an excellent rebounding team, so we’ll have to make sure and box out as well.”
Penn State’s roster features perhaps one of the most explosive guards in the conference in Teniya Page. The freshman guard scored 31 points against Michigan, becoming just the fifth freshman in Penn State history to top the 30-point mark.
Averaging slightly more than 19 points per game in Big Ten play, Page is a multidimensional player with many weapons in her arsenal, Bluder said.
“[Page] is shooting the 3-ball well, but she can beat you off the bounce, too,” she said.
Hawkeye senior forward Kali Peschel agreed, saying Penn State’s record is certainly not an indicator of its talent level. The Nittany Lions’ one conference win came against then-No. 14 Northwestern.
Peschel, who averages 6 points and 5.5 rebounds per game, is part of a frontcourt that head coach Bluder believes is the key to success in conference play. But Peschel knows that she will get every opponent’s best shot from here on out.
“This team realized pretty quickly that the Big Ten is very even, and any team can win any game,” she said. “[The Nitany Lions] will really test our focus. Their record really doesn’t show how good they are.”
Though the heartbreaking loss to Michigan State was no doubt demoralizing, it exposed weaknesses that, if corrected, will benefit Bluder’s squad.
One area that has been far from a weakness throughout the 2015-16, however, has been the play of freshman guard Tania Davis. She averages 6.6 points per game in her first season at Iowa.
In East Lansing against the Spartans, Davis collected 16 points, 6 rebounds, and 5 assists in her return to her home state.
But Davis looked beyond her stat line, seeing only an “L” in the win/loss column. She said the team has since had plenty of time to digest the defeat, and Penn State will face a different group of Hawkeyes than the one that took the floor against Michigan State.
“We had a long while to talk about [the loss],” Davis said. “Now, it’s time to put our words in to action.”
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