After two straight game cancellations — leading to a week-and-a-half break in competition — the Iowa women’s basketball team (9-3, 5-3) will welcome No. 23 Northwestern (8-3, 6-3) to Carver-Hawkeye Arena Thursday.

COVID-19 issues within the Rutgers program and the decision to call off a trip to play Maryland because of inauguration events meant Iowa had some time to breathe in the midst of the congested Big Ten schedule. Iowa played its last game on Jan. 18 against Purdue, which it won, 87-81.

“It was an opportunity to give them two days off on a weekend, which they don’t really get this time of year,” Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder said.

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Along with the rest, the team also got to scrimmage a fair amount to avoid falling out of game shape and find time to work on new skills in the mean time.

“It’s really challenging always having to be ready, but not knowing if anything will come of it,” center Monika Czinano said. “We’ve had a lot of opportunities to work on us in the middle of the season, which is really unusual as it is normally something we only do during preseason.”

With the short break winding down to a halt, Iowa must turn its attention to Northwestern. The last time the two teams met earlier in the season, Northwestern won, 77-67, in Iowa’s lowest scoring game of the season so far.

A major reason for that was Northwestern’s ability to close down Iowa’s key offensive cog, Caitlin Clark, holding her to just eight points and forcing four turnovers from her. Despite the tough game last time, Clark has had time to look at the film and prepare herself for the rematch.

“There’s so much you can learn from film, and there’s so many things you don’t see on the floor,” she said. “Watching the film from the last game I think as a team there’s a lot of things we can do better, and me personally as well, so I think we’ll clean things up and be ready to go at our place”

Iowa looks to find success in post play against Northwestern once again. Czinano put up 28 points and 12 rebounds in the first meeting of the season and dominated.

With Northwestern lacking the same size Iowa has in its starting rotation, Iowa will be trying to take advantage of Czinano’s abilities inside once again.

“Our inside game is really good, and they don’t have the height to contend with that, so I’m looking forward to Monika getting a lot of touches again in this game,” Bluder said.

Another key to the game will be turnovers. Although the two teams shot around the same percentage, Northwestern ended up winning the turnover battle by 10 last time around.

The game between Iowa and Northwestern tips off at 5 p.m. and will be televised on the BTN.