Iowa women’s basketball is in an unfamiliar era without the sharpshooting talent of Caitlin Clark, but it has managed to find new opportunities to put points on the board closer to the hoop, thanks to fourth-year Addison O’Grady.
O’Grady scored a team-high 27 points in Sunday’s 86-73 win over Drake, arguably the toughest competition the Hawkeyes have faced thus far this season.
The fourth-year credits her scoring to the Bulldogs’ defensive struggles and the passing of her teammates.
“I think they were switching between zone and player, and I think they were over-rotating,” O’Grady said after the win. “That led to easy buckets for me. My teammates were doing a really good job at getting me the ball.”
The game against the Bulldogs, which saw Iowa take a comfortable win at the Knapp Center in Des Moines, was not O’Grady’s first endeavor into high numbers this season. The center put up 10 points in the previous game, a 94-57 win over Toledo, and scored in double-digits against Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois as well.
The Hawkeyes have many new faces this year, with first-years Teagan Mallegni and Taylor Stremlow being examples. O’Grady, on the other hand, is a returning player whose skills have developed over multiple seasons of consistent play.
During the 2023-24 season, O’Grady stepped in at a critical moment in the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight. When key defensive player Hannah Stuelke fouled out of the game against LSU, O’Grady was brought in to slow down star player Angel Reese.
“She came in, and she brought the size that I don’t have, and I think it gave Angel some fits,” Stuelke said after the game, which saw the Hawkeyes punch a ticket to the Final Four.
The story was similar in the 2022-23 season. While Caitlin Clark’s movement to the WNBA Draft and later the Indiana Fever was one of the squad’s biggest losses this season, the departure of veteran guard Monika Czinano that year was a tough hurdle to leap over.
Despite this, younger players stepped up to fill Czinano’s place, among them Stuelke and O’Grady, only first- and second-years, respectively, at the time.
O’Grady is a player who has a history of stepping into bigger roles, and this season sees the center at arguably her most impactful, with several players from past seasons having departed from the program.
In Iowa’s exhibition game this season, a 110-55 win against Missouri Western, O’Grady started as a center per the decision of new head coach Jan Jensen and put up eight points and two rebounds.
“That center battle is pretty competitive,” Jensen said, noting the contest between O’Grady and first-year Ava Heiden. “It’s pretty close. Ava was under the weather. Addi … she has a little more experience. She knows about what we want a little bit more. I don’t know if we’ve seen a big separation, but we’re going to need them both.”
O’Grady continued a hot streak in the season against Northern Illinois, tallying 18 points, the highest on the team behind fourth-year Lucy Olsen’s 20.
The center has kept the momentum going since, crediting Jensen — whose primary focus was on development of the bigs while assistant to former head coach Lisa Bluder — for her influence.
“Just doing your work early is probably the biggest takeaway that I get from her,” O’Grady said. “Once I do my work before the ball even gets to me, then it’s an easy shot.”
O’Grady also felt good about the Drake game as a whole and the excitement of the environment.
“It was really fun to play right next to the student section,” O’Grady said. “They were heckling us. But those are the games that you look forward to the most.”
O’Grady and the Hawkeyes will return to action in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on Wednesday to take on Kansas.