By James Kay
While the rest of campus has gone home for Thanksgiving, the Hawkeye women’s basketball team had work to do Saturday.
Iowa improved to 4-0 on the season after defeating UMass, 71-30. The 30 points allowed to UMass tied a Carver-Hawkeye record for fewest points scored against the Hawkeyes.
“I thought we ran well, we passed the ball well, we crashed well, we had great paint points again,” Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder said in a release. “Sometimes against a zone you don’t get those paint points. We were able to dominate the paint points again with 32. And then Lex [Kastanek] shot the ball really well today, so that was really nice to see her coming in doing a good job shooting the ball.”
Senior Alexa Kastanek led the team with 17 points coming off of the bench. She shot 5-10 from the perimeter. Sophomore Meghan Gustafson complemented Kastanek’s performance with 13 points and 8 rebounds.
Ally Disterhoft had 10 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 assists of her own. In 87 career games, Disterhoft has scored 10 or more points in 82 of them.
The Hawkeyes didn’t take long to get out ahead of UMass. They held a 26-7 lead over the Minutemen after one quarter. Iowa shot 61.1 percent from the field compared to UMass, who shot a meager 18.8 percent for the quarter.
The Hawkeyes would only allow 23 points the rest of the way while shooting 46 percent collectively.
Their next game will be at 2 p.m. Sunday at Carver-Hawkeye against South Dakota.
