ALBANY, N.Y. — The Iowa women’s basketball team has a chance to exact revenge for last season’s crushing national championship loss against LSU.
The Hawkeyes will face off against the Tigers in the Elite Eight of the 2024 NCAA Tournament on Monday.
The Hawkeyes are coming off their best performance so far in the tournament with an 89-68 win over No. 5 Colorado in the Sweet 16. Iowa had all five starters score in double-digits, shooting 53.8 percent from the field and 40.9 percent from the 3-point line. The team also had three players score off the bench.
Iowa knows it will need role players to step up to come out victorious on Monday. Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder has said several times this season that when everyone is contributing, that’s when the Hawkeyes are at their best.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re Caitlin, who plays 40 minutes a game, or if you’re somebody who doesn’t really get off the bench, every single person on our team matters,” Iowa veteran Kate Martin said.
LSU enters the rematch against Iowa with a 31-5 record on the season, finishing second in the SEC behind South Carolina, who the Tigers lost to 79-72 in the conference championship. LSU won its previous three tournament games by an average of 15.3 points, with guard Flau’jae Johnson averaging 19.6 points in those contests.
“We’re really mainly just focused on ourselves right now at this point in the season,” Martin said. “There’s not much you can do, you know, to worry about anybody else other than yourselves, but we’re looking forward to it. It really didn’t matter to us who we were playing in this game because we were just really excited to be back in the Elite Eight and get another shot at making the Final Four.”
LSU shot lights out against Iowa in the national championship, especially in the first half. Guards Jasmine Carson and Kateri Poole helped the Tigers shoot over 75 percent from beyond the arc during the first two quarters and 58 percent from the field.
LSU also took advantage of Iowa getting into foul trouble, with star guard Caitlin Clark picking up three fouls in the first half and fellow starters Monika Czinano and McKenna Warnock eventually fouling out in the later quarters. This allowed LSU to hold on to a commanding lead for much of the game, with the Tigers eventually winning 102-85.
“We got run out of the gym last year,” Bluder said. “It was pretty bad.”
To be able to make it 2-0 against Iowa, Mulkey said her team is going to have to find a way to slow down Clark, who finished with 30 points and eight assists during their last matchup. Clark said she expects a lot out of herself and her teammates, and she thinks Monday’s game will be highly competitive because both squads “want it so bad.”
“I think I took 19 threes and 22 shots total versus LSU the last time we played them. So it’s about not settling and falling in love with my 3-point shot, but being able to get into the paint, drive into the paint,” Clark said.
Mulkey also said the team must make an effort to get back in transition defense and keep an eye out on players who didn’t get as much playing time in the national championship, such as forward Hannah Stuelke and guard Sydney Affolter, who played limited minutes in 2023 but have now been inserted into the starting lineup.
“Syd does so many things that don’t show up in the box score, whether it’s her physicality, whether it’s her rebounding, whether it’s her mentality of diving on the floor for loose balls … Everybody on a team needs a player like Syd,” Clark said.
LSU center Angel Reese guarding Stuelke will be different than going against Czinano, who was more of a traditional post-player who does most of her scoring in the paint, whereas Stuelke is undersized for her position but makes up for it with her speed. Stuelke said the biggest point of emphasis against Reese needs to be rebounding.
“[Stuelke’s] more versatile than Czinano, so I know I’m gonna have to guard her much higher than I had to guard Czinano last year,” Reese said. “She also rebounds really well.”
