ROSEMONT, Illinois — The Iowa women’s basketball team enters a new era of Big Ten basketball as USC, UCLA, Washington, and Oregon join the conference for the 2024-25 season.
The decision to add UCLA and USC to the Big Ten was announced on June 30, 2022, while the approval of Washington and Oregon was made public on Aug. 4, 2023. The four schools officially joined the conference on Aug. 2, 2024.
New Iowa head coach Jan Jensen, who replaced longtime coach Lisa Bluder in the offseason, believes that the new additions will bring new styles and more fan interest to the Big Ten.
“I think it’s tremendously strong,” Jensen said. “It always has been. But then when you’re adding our friends from the old Pac-12, it instantaneously gets a lot stronger. People have asked me often, ‘What does that mean for the Big Ten?’ It means it gets a whole lot tougher to win the Big Ten championship, but also makes it a whole lot more fun.”
Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti agrees that the new programs have a lot to offer the conference.
“We’ve got really strong programs coming into the Big Ten women’s basketball, so the league has just gotten a lot deeper and more competitive,” Petitti said. “We want to have more opportunities, want to get as many teams as we can in the NCAA tournament to reward the competitive aspect of play in the Big Ten.”
Iowa third-year Hannah Stuelke is excited to play against modern offensive styles.
“I’m excited for it,” Stuelke said. “I think they play different styles of basketball than we see as much in the Big Ten. I think it’ll be fun playing against new girls — new competition. There’s some really big names out there on the coast, so I think it’ll be fun to play against them.
The new additions should bring more firepower to an already powerhouse Big Ten, which already featured seven teams in the 2024 NCAA tournament.
UCLA finished the 2023-24 season with a 27-7 record and a Sweet 16 appearance before falling to defending champion LSU.
USC, the other California newcomer, ended their 2023-24 season 29-6 overall and won the Pac-12 tournament championship over No. 1 seed Stanford. The team recorded three wins in the NCAA tournament before coming up short against UConn in the Elite Eight.
Oregon and Washington had subpar seasons last year, but both programs have earned Final Four berths within the last 10 seasons.
Jensen added that the new additions have made the Big Ten arguably the best basketball conference in America.
“I think we had a tremendous conference the way it was, but adding these four schools, with the level of coaching that they bring, is going to make us arguably the best conference in the country for women’s basketball,” Jensen said. “They all run a class program. The Big Ten is full of class coaches. It did nothing but make us better. Is it harder? Heck yeah. But that’s what makes you great right?”
Petitti also agrees that a significant amount of attention is going into Big Ten women’s basketball.
“The amount of resources and time that we’re spending in the office on women’s basketball is significant,” Petitti said. “[For] our current staff, it’s a huge point of emphasis, because there is an opportunity to grow. I feel that way about a lot of things happening in the Big Ten on the women’s side, not just women’s basketball.”