Spencer Wagen / 1600 ESPN
“I kept telling the players: I didn’t want rearview mirrors. You just gotta keep looking forward.” Those words from Iowa women’s basketball coach Jan Jensen turned out to be sage advice for her young team this season. After a 12-2 start, followed by a five-game losing streak in January, the Hawkeyes closed with eight wins in their final 10 games and got to the 20-win mark for the ninth consecutive season. See what only looking forward can do?
Of course, it’s not that simple. To get to the point where the team is “clicking” or “firing on all cylinders” or whatever cliché you want to use to say that the team is “playing good basketball,” some looking back is necessary. Learning from the past is important, but as Jensen has said many, many times this season, focusing on the “woulda, coulda, shoulda’s” really gets you nowhere.
So what has helped the Hawkeyes come out of a tough stretch in January and build momentum going into the postseason? There are a number of things you can point to, but you first need to look at Lucy Olsen. The Villanova transfer used the word “wonky” to describe the early part of the season when she spoke to the media on Sunday after Iowa’s Senior Day win over Wisconsin, and she couldn’t be more spot-on, especially when you look at her own play.
Olsen’s struggles during the team’s losing streak in January were well documented, with “rock bottom” for her coming in a one-point loss to Oregon, where she scored just four points, grabbed six rebounds and turned the ball over five times. Then, something clicked, and a perfect shooting night (8-for-8) with 20 points in a win over Washington two nights later helped pull Olsen and her team out of the slump and set them on the course that they’re on now. Olsen has scored 20 points or more in seven of the last 10 games, and her play this season earned her a first-team All-Conference nod this week.
Another piece to the puzzle of the Hawkeyes’ late-season surge has been the play and the health of both Sydney Affolter and Hannah Stuelke. If you recall, both had knee procedures in the offseason and the return to playing condition definitely took some time to get right. In turn, the team lost valuable chemistry building time between Olsen, Affolter and Stulke. Since the aforementioned Washington game, both players have been fantastic, with Affolter turning into a double-double machine and Stulke saving one of the best performances of her career for last, scoring 21 points and grabbing 15 rebounds in last Sunday’s win over Wisconsin.
You also can’t overlook how well this team has played defensively this season. When the shots weren’t falling, the team leaned on defensive play to keep them in games. It didn’t always result in a win, but when the team needed to play solid defense they were able to more times than not, and turned in some impressive performances — especially in holding USC to 69 points and UCLA to 65.
There’s no question this Iowa team is playing really good basketball going into postseason play. Jan Jensen and her staff, along with the players, deserve a lot of credit for turning things around but also for staying together when things looked bleak. Sure, this year’s postseason run likely won’t be a repeat of the last two seasons, which ended with appearances in the national championship game, but a 20-win season and a trip back to the NCAA Tournament is a nice streak to keep alive in what is the first year of the “Post Caitlin” era.
Spencer Wagen is the host of “Spencer on Sports,” weekdays from 4-6 p.m. on 1600 ESPN. You can follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @SWOnTheRadio.
