The Iowa women’s basketball team has endured some challenging adversity this season, but they put everything together on Sunday afternoon against No. 4 USC, upsetting them in a 76-69 thriller at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
While the Hawkeyes have struggled this season with turnovers and lackluster three-point shooting, Iowa capitalized on its raucous home court advantage to pull off the shocking victory, improving to 15-7 overall and 5-6 in conference play in the process.
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One of the main factors in the Hawkeyes’ victory was limiting USC’s most dangerous weapon in second-year guard JuJu Watkins, who entered the contest as the nation’s third-best scorer with an average of 24.5 points per game.
Watkins tallied 27 points on this day, but went only 1-for-7 from beyond the arc, drastically improving Iowa’s chances.
“Part of our game plan was focusing on our defense and really making sure that JuJu was going to pass to other people, make other people hurt us,” fourth-year Addison O’Grady, who had 13 points, said. “Obviously, JuJu was going to get her own points, but not to get discouraged by that. When she wasn’t hitting and no one was hitting, we were just rolling. That gave us a lot of confidence going into the start of the game.”
Another key area of improvement was the turnover battle. The Hawkeyes have been plagued by turnover issues all season long, including a 30-turnover performance against Tennessee on Dec. 7. In fact, Iowa hasn’t won a game committing 25 or more turnovers since 2009.
But all of those issues were pushed aside on Sunday. The Hawkeyes still gave the ball away 17 times, but forced 18 from the Trojans and scored 17 points off of those turnovers.
Three-point shooting wasn’t a major factor in the game, but McCabe’s three triples in the first half helped set the tone early and give Iowa a key boost of energy. Guards Sydney Affolter and Aaliyah Guyton also chipped in one triple each.
Arguably the biggest bright spot of the contest was the strong performance of fourth-year guard Lucy Olsen. Olsen, who transferred in from Villanova in the offseason, scored a game-high 28 points and four rebounds in the victory.
Some of those crucial points came in the fourth quarter, where Olsen halted any chance of a USC rally with some tough mid-range jumpers and floaters. The impressive showing served as a good morale boost for Olsen, who struggled to make an impact in recent losses against Oregon and Nebraska.
“I’ve been struggling just because we’ve been losing,” Olsen said after the game. “I feel like I haven’t helped a lot with helping my team get the win. I’m glad today the shots were falling. I think in practice, we’ve all been clicking a lot better. I think it just takes time sometimes.”
Just a few weeks ago, Iowa’s season looked to take a turn for the worse. The aforementioned loss at Oregon on Jan. 19 marked a fifth consecutive defeat and left the Hawkeyes at a pedestrian 12-7 overall record.
Since then, Iowa has rallied to win three consecutive games and now is once again on track to make the NCAA tournament.
“I’m thrilled, grateful, thankful,” Jensen said. “I think we called great timeouts, advanced tonight, maybe hadn’t done that as well a couple games ago. We still didn’t shoot great tonight, but we were able to win. If we can shoot it a little better and hold our defense, I think there’s a lot of promise for these next seven games.”