Behind the play of Tania Davis, the Iowa’s women’s basketball team improved to 12-7 after defeating Rutgers, 71-59, on the road Tuesday night.
With the win in Piscataway, New Jersey, the Hawkeyes snapped a six-game losing streak on the Big Ten road.

Davis led the charge with 15 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists to go along with 4 steals. Davis’ work against the Rutgers press in the second half was the most impressive. She consistently beat the press by passing ahead to her teammates, which frequently led to open lay-ups to keep the Scarlet Knights at arm’s-length.

Sophomore Megan Gustafson also had a strong game, finishing with 19 points. She made all of her seven attempts from the field.

“We grew today,” Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder said in a release. “We grew during the Maryland game even though it was a loss. We brought that confidence into this game and got our first Big Ten road win, and it feels good.”

Despite winning by a wide margin, the Hawkeyes had a hard time breaking away from Rutgers in the first half. Going into the third quarter, the Hawkeyes had only a 2-point lead.

But at the start of the half, Iowa broke the Rutgers staggering full court press blew the game open.

“In the third quarter, we broke their press with confidence and got high-percentage shots off that,” Bluder said in a press release. “They fouled us a lot, and we got to the free-throw line.”

The Hawkeyes shot 70 percent from the field while going to the charity stripe 18 times in the second half. Davis was responsible for 11 of those free-throw attempts.

Going into the game, the Hawkeyes were ranked No. 13 in the country in assists per game. They continued that pace by racking up 17 assists, 9 between Davis and freshman Kathleen Doyle.

Senior captain Ally Disterhoft had a quiet game; she only knocked down 6 points in 34 minutes of work. She did, however, pass Iowa alum Jaime Printy (1,841 points) on Iowa’s all-time career scoring list. Disterhoft now has 1,843.

As her career comes closer to its end, Disterhoft keeps creeping closer and closer to the all-time scoring mark at Iowa, and at this point, she needs only 217 points to break the record. To do so in the regular season, she would need to average almost 22 points per game the rest of the way.