The No. 4 Iowa women’s basketball team will be back on the road on Wednesday when the Hawkeyes travel to Hilton Coliseum in Ames to take on Iowa State in the annual Cy-Hawk game.
The Hawkeyes are coming off a 99-65 win this past weekend against Bowling Green at Carver-Hawkeye Arena where Caitlin Clark led Iowa with 24 points, 11 rebounds, and seven assists while shooting 50 percent from the field despite a very well-rounded scoring effort.
Guards Kate Martin and Sydney Affolter also notched double digits, scoring 17 and 14 points, respectively, as Iowa marked its sixth game of the season scoring over 90 points.
During Wednesday’s media availability, head coach Lisa Bluder said the team’s ball movement has improved since the first loss to Kansas State.
“If you look at that Kansas State loss, we had our lowest [number of] assists of the year,” she said. “[Since then] I think other people have gotten their confidence and have had more opportunities to shoot the ball.”
Affolter’s 14 points marked the most by any other bench player in the contest, and the junior from Chicago also notched four rebounds and three assists.
Iowa guard Kylie Feuerbach, who transferred from Iowa State two years ago, said Affolter had transitioned well in filling the gap in rebounding left by the departures of Monika Czinano and McKenna Warnock.
“She’s really taking on that ‘big-dog’ role, but she just knows how to crash and position herself well and is just the definition of a workhorse,” Feuerbach said. “She’s definitely a player you want to be on the floor with.”
Heading into the matchup with Iowa State, the Hawkeyes face a 4-3 Cyclones squad led by freshman duo Audi Crooks and Addy Brown, who lead the Cyclones in points with 16 and 14.3 points per game, respectively.
Iowa has claimed victory in four of the last five matchups against Iowa State, with the Hawkeyes last winning, 70-57, in 2022 in a low-scoring game where the Hawkyes shot just 42 percent from the field and Clark was held to just 19 points.
Clark said last year wasn’t the team’s prettiest game, but they found a way to win.
“They’re physical games, and not a lot [of fouls] usually get called,” Clark said on playing Iowa State. “They’re high-tension, high-emotion, and that’s how every rivalry game always is.”
Led by head coach Billy Fennelly, the Cyclones have generally a new lineup compared to the last time these two teams faced off, with Iowa State having starters consisting of three freshmen and just two seniors in their last game, an 85-58 win against University of North Carolina-Wilmington.
“It makes you pay attention a lot more and watch more of their games because we don’t know them really necessarily like we would in previous years when they had the same starting five for a couple of years [in a row],” Clark said.
Iowa will again be at a size disadvantage against Iowa State, though, as the Cyclones have four players at 6-foot-2 and higher who average more than 20 minutes of playing time.
Clark said Iowa State doesn’t bring with it any new threats they have yet to see already this season, in which the Hawkeyes have competed against players such as Kansas State center Ayoka Lee — who stands 6-foot-6.
“[Iowa State’s] post players are obviously very tall, but their guard players are tall too,” Clark said. “I think the biggest thing is that we can throw a lot of different defenses at them, which poses a challenge [to them] of trying to assess our defense and see what we’re doing.”
Both Clark and Feuerbach said the team expects Hilton to be a loud, raucous environment but that their previous games against in-state opponents Northern Iowa on the road and at home against Drake prepared them for moments and games like this.
“I don’t think it’s any different than any other road environment that we go to,” Clark said. “I do expect a lot of Iowa fans to be at the game.”
