Iowa City- Lute Olson never could have imagined this kind of crowd was for an Iowa women’s basketball game. In a sold out Carver Hawkeye Arena the home fans were in it from the start. The crowd erupted when Gabby Marshall nailed a three pointer on Iowa’s second possession, and they were no less loud when Hannah Stuelke made a bucket to tie the score at 5-5. They continued to cheer as Iowa extended a lead to 10. They roared when Lynette Woodard, the previous scoring record holder, stepped to mid court. During post game ceremonies Clark recognized the crowd in saying “Thank you for being here. We went from playing with the curtains down to now you can’t get a ticket to our games. You’re changing women’s basketball and we appreciate it!” Coach Bluder said, “24 years ago Jan, Jenny, and I walked into Carver Hawkeye Arena and said ‘one day we’re gonna fill this place’. I don’t think any of us believed it when we said it, but here we are. We did it.”
The crowd came into the door expecting to see Caitlin Clark set the all-time NCAA scoring record. She sat just 17 points behind for LSU Tiger Pete Maravich. What they saw, in the first quarter, was just about everyone but Clark get into the scoring action. Stuelke had 10 points in the first 10 minutes. Gabby Marshall nailed a couple threes and Sydney Affolter, Kylie Fuerbach, and Addison O’Grady each had a deuce, as Iowa led 28-19 after the first frame. In the middle of the second the crowd chanted Mollie Davis’ name. Unfortunately, it was because she was being carried off the court after an apparent leg injury. Davis got a rebound off of a teammate’s miss, but her leg appeared to buckle as she landed on the court. Coach Bluder noted that the team rallied after the injury. “That was a really tough thing to overcome. And I’m proud of Kate, Kylie, and Sydney for how well they handled that”, said the head Hawkeye. A chant of Mol-lie filled the arena as trainers carried Davis to the tunnel. Ohio State made a run and brought the score back within four, but Iowa was able to cap the first half with a 6-0 run in the final 0.3 seconds. It started when Hannah Stuelke received a deep pass from Clark with five seconds remaining. She was fouled just before the clock hit triple zeros, and the play continued when OSU’s Cotie McMahon was tagged with a technical foul. Stuelke hit her two free throws, and then Caitlin Clark stepped to the line for the technical free throws. The WNBA bound senior gave the fans another reason to cheer. As she dropped both free throws through the net she tied, then broke Maravich’s scoring record. But the loudest cheer of the end of the half secquence was when Stuelke nailed a catch and shoot layup at the buzzer. The bucket didn’t count, but the crowd went bananas to send the team to halftime with a 48-39 lead.
The second half offered plenty more loud moments, and they came early and often. A logo three by Clark stemmed a Buckeye 8-0 run, and then Marshall hit another to bring the crowd to it’s feet. Both teams managed runs, back and forth, throughout the third quarter. At 3:37 OSU’s Rikki Harris was assessed the Buckeye’s second technical foul of the game. After Stuelke made one of two Caitlin Clark dropped both free throws to extend the Iowa lead to eight. Kate Martin then hit back to back layups and the Hawks held a 65-54 lead. But that wasn’t the end of the onslaught. Gabby Marshall wound up from the right corner and buried a trey to extend the lead to 14 at 68-54. And yet, Iowa still wasn’t done. Martin drained a three ball out of the OSU timeout to make give Iowa a 17 point lead. The Buckeyes, who never went away throughout the game, rallied to end the third quarter trailing 75-64.
And in the fourth quarter, the crowd continued to be raucus. Stuelke was fouled a layup off of a feed from Affolter. The crowd loved that, and loved it even more when the following OSU possession ended in a shot clock violation. But the dagger may have come when Clark hit a three from the left wing with 2:59 left in the game. It gave Iowa an 87-74 lead. Iowa called a timeout after that as the crowd, once again, rose to it’s feet and cheered. The Hawks followed that up with a Kate Martin free throw, a Marshall steal, and Stuelke scoring of the Martin assist. Martin admitted during her senior day interview that she slept with an Iowa women’s basketball poster on the ceiling while growing up. Another late game cheer when former Crestwood Cadet Sharon Goodman stepped to Mediacom Court one more time as a senior. Though she recorded no points, her story was more than enough to garner the appreciates of the CHA crowd. As the clock hit zeros the Hawks locked up a 93-83 win over the Big Ten Conference champions and propel themselves into the Big Ten Tournament with momentum. Clark finished with 35 points, 9 assists, and 6 rebounds. Stuelke netted 23 points and grabbed 9 rebounds. Gabby Marshall was 4-8 from behind the arc in 35 minutes. The Hawkeye women’s basketball team will the regular season 26-4 and 15-3 in the Big Ten Conference. Ohio State falls to 25-4 and 16-2 in the B1G. They will hold the number one seed in the Big Ten Tourney, which starts on Wednesday in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
