The Iowa women’s basketball team will head on the road to compete against Penn State.

By Mario Williams
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The Iowa women’s basketball team has charged into its “Redemption Tour,” and thus far the team is 2-0.

The next stop will be in University Park, Pennsylvania, where the Hawkeyes will compete against Penn State. These two teams met earlier in the season, and it wasn’t the outcome the Hawks had hoped for.

Iowa lost to Penn State in Carver-Hawkeye, 82-69.

“It was a bad game for us. I would venture to say it was our worst game of the year,” Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder said. “How much of it was us and how much of it was Penn State; who knows? But I know that we are a much different team than we were when we played Penn State at home. That game was a shock to me.”

In that sloppy loss, Iowa and Penn State were tied for only 55 seconds, and the Lions led for the remainder of the contest. Penn State also shot 49 percent from the floor and outrebounded Iowa 48-34. The Hawks also shot 35 percent from the field and were 4-of-25 from behind the arc.

Not only do the Hawkeyes know what the Lions are capable of, they’re not under estimating their record either. Penn State is 10-17 overall, 5-11 in the Big Ten.

“I said this before we played them the last time: They are better than their record indicates, and they still are,” Bluder said. “They’ve gotten better every game this year.”

Since Penn State downed Iowa on the Hawks’ home court, they’ve only won three games, while Iowa has won four. The Lions are 34.4 percent from downtown, which ranks seventh in the Big Ten. Iowa is 31.4 percent from behind the arc, which ranks 12th in the conference, only behind Indiana and Northwestern.

Defending the Lions from scoring downtown will have to be in Iowa’s plan.

“That’s one of those tapes that you want to just throw away,” Bluder said. “They’ve proved that they are a good 3-point shooting team. We’ve identified they’re 3-point shooters, and we definitely need to get out on them. I think we’re doing a much better job communicating where shooters are when we’re in zone.”

Penn State’s Tenia Page is averaging 15.6 points per game, shooting 41.6 percent from the field and 42.3 from the 3-point line. Bluder noted that freshman Tania Davis would have her work cut out for her defending Page.

Davis has scored in double figures in Iowa’s last two “redemption wins”; she entered the starting lineup after the Penn State loss.

“I’ve played against Tenia in AAU a couple of times,” Davis said. “It’ll be huge for me to go there and get a win on their home floor, just like they did here.”

If Iowa walks away win, the team will finish off their “Redemption Tour” 3-0. The team will also close its last home and regular season game against Illinois. The goal is to finish its last four regular-season games 4-0, and if they keep at it, the Hawks could achieve that.

“I personally have to keep reminding myself that we’re a young team,” junior Ally Disterhoft said. “We’re going to have those bumps in the road just because we don’t have that experience that maybe we did have last year. We are making steps to improve, and I think it’s shown in the past two games.”