If there was any team that was going to knock the Iowa women’s basketball team out of the Big Ten tournament, it would be a team the likes of Ohio State.
The 60-59 loss marks the second loss to the Buckeyes this season — both games decided in the final seconds. The first matchup proved that the Hawkeyes can compete with the top 10 team after coming back from a 12-point deficit to push the game into overtime. The second time around, however, painted a different picture.
Iowa has been one of the more consistent offensive teams in the Big Ten through the back half of the season. Its offense had grown accustomed to prevailing through tough defenses, which played a large role in its late season turnaround.
But in the second-round matchup with Ohio State, the Hawkeyes became susceptible to that full court pressure and hounding half court defense as it hit just 39 percent of its shots on 59 shot attempts.
Did the Buckeye defense discourage the Hawkeye offense that much? Or was it as simple as an off-night for the whole team?
“I thought we got tremendously good looks,” Iowa head coach Jan Jensen said of the team’s offensive struggles. “Just didn’t hit some.”
Of the nine Iowa players to have graced the floor on Friday, only five of them put points on the board. And of those five players, four of them hit double figures: Sydney Affolter, Lucy Olsen, and Hannah Stuelke with 14 points each, while Ava Heiden logged 10 points. Kylie Feuerbach came through with seven.
Olsen was the only one who could score through the Buckeye defense early on. In the first quarter, she scored seven points on 3-of-9 shooting while the rest of the team missed all eight shot attempts — Affolter’s two made free throws being the only other scoring contributions.
She finished the first half with 12 of Iowa’s 28 points while shooting on 15 shot attempts, just enough to have the Hawkeyes trail by one at the break. But in the second half, Ohio State keyed in on Olsen as she scored just two points on three shot attempts in the last 20 minutes.
“We were trying to get the ball out of her hands, if we could,” Ohio State head coach Kevin McGuff said. “She played extremely well against us the first time… And so we wanted to wear her out with a full court pressure and then get the ball out of her hands in the half court.”
Affolter, Stuelke, and Feuerbach combined for 24 of Iowa’s 31 second-half points as a result of Ohio State being fixated on Olsen. Its defense held the first-team All-Big Ten guard without a single shot attempt in the fourth quarter specifically.
She admitted that the Buckeyes were playing good defense on her, going as far as saying that “ it threw me off a little bit.”
Even without her contributions, Iowa almost pulled off the upset. The game really came down to the open shots that the Hawkeyes failed to convert.
Taylor McCabe has as much of an off-night as she’s ever had, missing five threes in the second half. Feuerbach missed an open corner three in the last minute that would’ve put the Hawkeyes up two scores. Olsen also admittedly missed a couple of bunnies at the rim. They couldn’t get anything to fall when it mattered most.
“I think we got a lot of good, open shots,” Olsen said. “We just didn’t hit as many as we needed to… Just a few more makes and that’s our game.”
Jensen and her players would have loved to capture a third-straight Big Ten title. And while their conference tournament run came to a halt, there’s still some basketball left to be played this season.
“Even though we came up a little short, I think we’re [still] one of the hottest teams,” Jensen said. “I’m just so thankful that I get to coach them, and that we will be in the NCAA tournament.”