Lisa Bluder is starting to think that maybe a few more timeouts might be a good idea.
Bluder isn’t one to burn through her allotment of timeouts with this version of Iowa’s women’s basketball team, but with her team down four points and all out of sorts with less than two minutes left in Saturday’s game against Nebraska, Bluder felt the need to give her team a timeout and provide some incentive.
All the No. 5 Hawkeyes did was score the last nine points of the half, take a lead into halftime, and then dominate the Huskers in the second half of the 92-73 win.
“I think she fired us up,” said guard Caitlin Clark, who had 38 points and 10 rebounds. “That’s what I love about her. She’s going to coach us, and none of us want to let her down. We want to make her proud. We knew ourselves that we weren’t playing to the standard of Iowa basketball.”
“I think the team needed just kind of a gut check,” Bluder said. “Maybe I need to call more timeouts. But I really think it was more of a gut check than anything else.”
This week has been an entire gut check for the Hawkeyes (19-2 overall, 8-1 Big Ten), who have been queasy all week after last Sunday’s overtime loss at Ohio State that cost them the outright lead in the Big Ten.
“We had to sit on a loss for a week, that’s tough in itself, too,” Clark said. “But I think the thing about Ohio State is we knew we were winning the game the entire game, and that’s what hurt us more. We didn’t go to Columbus and lay an egg. We went there and played really good basketball. But we didn’t execute down the stretch to put ourselves into position to win.”
The Hawkeyes opened this game with a 9-0 burst, then played sloppy basketball until that late first-half run. The Huskers (13-7, 5-4) weren’t much better — they missed 10 of their first 11 shots — but slowly were able to cut into Iowa’s lead before eventually going up 31-27 and forcing Bluder to call a timeout.
Then it was all Hawkeyes.
Kate Martin made two free throws. Sydney Affolter scored inside, as did Martin 19 seconds later. Then Clark added the dagger of the half — a 3-pointer with two seconds left that gave Iowa a 36-31 lead heading into halftime.
“I think those last couple of minutes of the first half were really important, and we kind of took the momentum back before halftime.,” Clark said. “That’s a huge swing right there.”
The second half was all Iowa. The Hawkeyes had a 10-1 run early in the third quarter, and their lead just kept growing. They led 60-42 with two minutes left after a Taylor McCabe 3-pointer, and the Huskers weren’t about to be a threat again.
“I think the second half was much improved over the first half,” Bluder said. “First half, we were just a little bit out of sorts, we didn’t run our offense very well. But in the second half, we did. And so that’s good that we made that change at halftime.”
Clark, the nation’s leading scorer at 31.7 points per game, had the 53rd double-double of her career. She was 12-of-22 from the field, including 8-of-15 on 3-pointers.
Still, Bluder knew the Hawkeyes could be better. They were outrebounded 40-31, although the margin was much bigger earlier in the game.
“The rebounds are very disappointing, because we really tried to make that a point of emphasis this week,” Bluder dsaid. “We did not do a good job crashing the boards. In the last two games, we've kind of let down on that. And we have to get that back.”
Martin had 16 points and Affolter had 12.
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