NEW YORK – Turnovers turned the tide for the worse in the Iowa women’s basketball team’s uphill battle against top-ranked UConn. Playing before a Husky-friendly crowd inside Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, the Hawkeyes coughed up 26 turnovers that led to 41 Husky points in a 90-64 blowout loss Saturday afternoon.
Senior forward Hannah Stuelke led Iowa (10-2) with 17 points, followed by second-year guard Chit-Chat Wright with 16 and reserve guard Taylor Stremlow with 11.
UConn’s Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong scored a combined 50 points. Fudd splashed 5-of-13 three-pointers while Strong made 10-of-18 from the floor as the Huskies shot 52 percent from the field. Strong tallied a team-high six steals while Serah Williams added three blocks as UConn remained perfect on the season.
UConn’s KK Arnold nailed a three-pointer to open the second half, bringing the Huskies’ lead to 14 and sparking a 17-4 run that ballooned the advantage to as many as 21 in the third quarter. Iowa head coach Jan Jensen said she “felt good” about her team’s 11-point deficit at the halftime break, but said the game spiraled out of control during the third. Iowa was outscored by 10 while staying in a zone defense, one Jensen said shouldn’t have lasted as long as it did.
Part of playing the zone defense was due to the absence of Iowa senior guard Kylie Feuerbach, who suffered an ankle injury in the first quarter and only played just under 1o minutes.
“If you’re going to stay in games with teams that are as great as UConn, you need everybody every minute,” Jensen said. “And we didn’t have her, and then we didn’t play very particularly well in our inside game.”
Iowa, which was outscored, 40-24, in points in the paint, never closed within single digits in the second half. The Hawkeyes held chances to make a competitive contest in the first two frames, yet turnovers proved to be the undoing.
“I think they [UConn] physically created probably about 16 to 18 of them, which is too many,” Jensen said. “But the mental state is what they created on the others.”
For Jensen, playing a team with a regal reputation like UConn requires compartmentalization. The Huskies are the defending national champs and boast 11 other titles, but Iowa needed to ignore the hardware.
“What I tried to get our team to do was play the five people on the floor,” she explained. “Not the ranking, not the tradition, but when you get on there, and you’re playing UConn, all of a sudden, it’s that pressure. It can rattle you.”
The Huskies led by as many as 14 in the first quarter as Strong tallied nine points on 4-of-7 shooting. UConn scored 16 points in the paint and 11 off turnovers as Iowa trailed by 10 at the break thanks to a floater from Wright.
Dubbed the “defensive captain” of the squad by Jensen, Feuerbach started the first quarter but limped off with an apparent left ankle injury that held her out the majority of the frame.
The guard would return to action, but couldn’t remain on the court for long. Jensen explained Feuerbach’s ailment as a high ankle sprain, one that didn’t require crutches but was still difficult to walk with.
“She said, ‘Coach, I just don’t have a push,’” Jensen said of Feuerbach, who the coach hoped would return in time for Iowa’s next game on Dec. 28.
The Hawkeyes battled back to within seven points during the second quarter off a layup from Hannah Stuelke, but after Ava Heiden drew her second foul, both whistles occurring in just over a minute of action, the Huskies took full advantage. Strong nailed a corner three off the ensuing in-bounds play to start an 8-0 run with six points coming off Iowa turnovers.
“We talked about what was controllable for us, just being strong with the ball and really leaning into that moment, and we didn’t do it as well as we could have,” Stremlow said.
UConn’s Blanca Quinonez pried the ball loose from Stuelke and took off down the court for a fast-break and-one lay-in. Iowa’s Journey Houston attempted an in-bounds pass after the made free throw, but Strong intercepted the ball near the block and scored an easy bucket.
Once again, Iowa got within single digits in the first half, as the Hawkeyes hit their next three shots from beyond the arc, but another turnover, this time from first-year Addie Deal, led to a made jumper from Fudd as the Hawkeyes entered the halftime tunnel down 11.
Both Heiden and backup center Layla Hays picked up a pair of fouls in the first half. The 90 points allowed were the most for the Hawkeyes since last year’s NCAA Tournament loss to Oklahoma.
Up Next
Iowa returns to Carver-Hawkeye Arena for its Big Ten home opener on Sunday, Dec. 28, at 3 p.m. Central. The Lady Lions are 6-4 on the season but on a three-game losing streak heading into an afternoon matchup against VCU today. Third-year center Gracie Merkle leads the squad with 21 points and eight rebounds per game.