Spencer Wagen / 1600 ESPN
After two history-making runs for the Iowa women’s basketball team, it’s totally reasonable for expectations for the Hawkeyes to be a little bit lower going into this year. When you lose one of the best players in the sport in Caitlin Clark to the pros and a strong supporting cast plus the legendary head coach to retirement, yeah, it’s fair to expect things to be a little bit different as one chapter ends and another one begins in Iowa City.
While an unbeaten start wasn’t necessarily out of the question for the Hawks this year, I can’t imagine many people had it on their proverbial bingo cards considering all of the change in the program from last year to this year.
So far, though, through six games, Iowa doesn’t have a blemish on its record, and while the schedule will ramp up here quite a bit in the next several weeks, a perfect start to the season is nothing to scoff at.
Three of those six wins have been against NCAA Tournament teams from last season (Virginia Tech, Kansas and Drake). Yes, every team is different from year-to-year, but Iowa could have easily loaded up on a “soft” non-conference schedule and had a real fools gold-type of feeling to the start of the year. That’s not what happened though, and things have been adequately challenging for what amounts to a pretty young Iowa team.
What’s been interesting to see so far this season is how much the Hawkeyes have excelled on defense. Through the first six games, opponents are averaging 59.3 points per game against Iowa, while the Hawkeyes are scoring 80.8 points per game themselves. Through six games last year, opponents had been averaging just under 65 points per game against Iowa — with the Hawks scoring about 91 points, on average.
Iowa head coach Jan Jensen says the team has bought-in to the emphasis they placed on defense and says having good on-ball defenders has helped against the competition they’ve faced so far. Jensen says as the schedule ramps up in the coming weeks, they will face “better and better consistent shooters and better athletes — so anything we can do to build that confidence (is key).”
Where Iowa has struggled in the early going is surprisingly a place where they excelled just one season ago: three-point shooting. Through six games, the Hawkeyes have made just 34 of 119 three point shots, good for a 28 percent clip. Last season, that number was at 37 percent. Considering that A) one of the best shooters in the history of the game is no longer on your team and B) it’s still very early in the season, the concern level over their lack of long-range shooting at this point is probably pretty low.
Growing pains will happen and, if we’re being honest, lights-out shooting from three isn’t necessary when the defense is playing as strong as it has been “I think it’s been really helpful that we’ve been playing pretty good defense because our offense isn’t exactly where we want it to be yet,” guard Lucy Olsen said after Sunday’s win over Washington State. “I think we have a lot of potential to keep getting better, but we’re still winning and a lot of that has come from the defensive end.”
One thing is for certain, the strong start to the season has truly been because of a team effort. Lucy Olsen has given steady leadership to this team, Addison O’Grady has taken ownership of the post and Hannah Stuelke has continued her strong play as well. Add in some key contributions from new faces like Teagan Mallegni and Taylor Stremlow; there’s work to be done but a lot to like about where this team is headed. The schedule does get much tougher with Tennessee, Iowa State and Northern Iowa coming up before the start of Big Ten play, but there’s a good chance this strong early start will be a boost of confidence for Iowa moving forward.
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, along with Bluesky and Threads.
