No. 22 Iowa women’s basketball entered halftime with a 16-point victory, 53-37, over Northern Iowa on Friday. By the 5:16 mark in the third quarter, the Panthers cut that lead down to seven. And with 4:38 left in the fourth quarter, Iowa held a one-point lead.

That made it 78-77 after UNI’s Maya McDermott hit the tough floater, giving her 26 points on the night up to that point. From that point on, though, the Hawkeyes outscored the Panthers, 11-6, to secure the gritty 89-83 victory. 

Iowa may have secured its 10th win of the season, but Northern Iowa made the Hawkeyes work every second for it until the clock hit zero. 

“I think we’ve seen them through stats and just where they’re ranked across the country in terms of that,” Iowa guard Taylor McCabe said. “You can never let a team like that get too close because they’re always going to be able to shoot their way back into it.” 

Northern Iowa doesn’t shoot a ton of threes but is one of the best three-point shooting teams in the country. The Panthers are shooting 39.55 percent on such attempts, which places them sixth in the country in percentage. 

But it wasn’t the deep shots that propelled the near-comeback — rather, their inside play. UNI shot 16-of-29 from the field, 5-of-14 from three, and 12-of-16 from the stripe in the second half. They shot 9-of-15 from inside the arc. 

And it was McDermott’s play that sparked hope for the Panthers — scoring 17 of her 30 total points on the night in the second half on 6-of-13 shooting, including a personal seven-point run. 

“She’s a tough player,” Iowa guard Lucy Olsen said of McDermott’s performance. “We knew coming into this game that she was going to be good … I think we gave her a few too many [looks], but every basket she made was tough. I don’t know if there’s much more we could have done.”

The 5-foot-6 guard ranks seventh in the country in scoring at 21.9 points per game. The Hawkeyes did just enough to take the victory, but McDermott’s presence was felt the whole way through. 

“She’s one of the best guards in the country,” UNI head coach Tanya Warren said of McDermott. “She probably didn’t get recruited high enough coming out of high school because of her size, but you can’t measure heart.” 

But if there’s one person who believed in McDermott’s abilities early on, it was Jan Jensen. As McDermott is the same age as Caitlin Clark, Jensen — now Iowa’s head coach — recruited the two Iowa products simultaneously. 

“I would like to say what went right was Maya McDermott,” Iowa head coach Jan Jensen said. “I love that kid. I recruited the heck out of her … She’s just a winner.”

Games like these are a good test of a team’s resilience. 

Iowa dominated the first half with a smooth offense and a hounding defense. The switch flipped in the second half, and the Hawkeyes were pushed to the edge but refused to fall. 

“That’s what we have to focus on because they feel this pressure,” Jensen said. “You’re looking at it like, ‘Oh, we let that lead slip’ … Winning is hard no matter who you play.” 

And for a smaller school that’s taken down then-No. 8 Iowa State and has pushed Kansas, Creighton, and Auburn to the brink, its 5-6 record doesn’t indicate the challenge it poses to any opponent on any given night. 

“If we can stay healthy, we believe we have a chance,” Warren said. “And if you haven’t noticed that by now, you probably figured out today.”