Hawkeyes secure first-round win in NCAA Women's Tournament

Fun side note on Iowa guard Kylie Feuerbach. Her longtime boyfriend is Yale’s John Poulakidas, who scored 28 points in the Bulldogs' upset of Auburn. Feuerbach is one of Caitlin Clark's roommates and she has a name, image and likeness deal with the Chicago White Sox.

I talked to Holy Cross' Janelle Allen, who is the older sister of Iowa defensive end Brian Allen Jr. It was a thrill, she said, when she found out her team would play in the NCAA Tournament at Iowa City. She averaged 10.2 points per game.

"It was so exciting. I mean, I honestly haven't seen Junior in months, just because of our schedules being so hectic; me being all the way at Boston, him being a little closer to where we grew up," Janelle said. "I texted him immediately. I was like, 'Junior, watch out, we're coming!' We were very happy."

They watched the Iowa-Kansas State NIT game together at Carver and Brian gave her a tour of the football complex and Kinnick Stadium. Janelle said, "He's my best friend." She couldn't stop smiling when talking about seeing him for a few days.

"I'm very happy that it worked out that way," she said. "I mean, the universe did something great."

Could Iowa win the Albany 2 Region? Absolutely. But let’s not forget that few teams have successfully slowed Clark and the Hawkeyes, including Kansas State. The Wildcats beat Iowa at the beginning of last season, then picked up a road win in Iowa City to open this year — a victory in which multiple defenders held Clark to only 28.1 percent shooting. Iowa defeated Kansas State on a neutral court around Thanksgiving, but I expect center Ayoka Lee to be the difference in the rubber-match. She scored 22 points and 18 points, respectively, in her first two meetings with the Hawkeyes. She could be due for a dominant performance in Iowa-Kansas State Round 3.

Man, Iowa’s region is brutal. One of my friends who has spent her whole career covering women’s college basketball said she’s never seen a region this difficult. Partly, it’s because of the sport’s increased parity. But also … this is just a loaded region. Not that the selection committee cares about perception, but it does show they did not give Caitlin Clark and Co. a cakewalk to Cleveland. I’ll also say the Elite Eight, but not at the hands of LSU — as much as I’d love to see a title game rematch. I’m going to predict that UCLA spoils that storyline, and the Bruins’ inside size advantage takes out the Hawkeyes.

IOWA CITY — The joke about Iowa is that there’s nothing here.

It’s boring. It’s flyover country. It’s so flat that if a breeze comes off the Missouri River, which carves out most of the Western border of the state, you feel it on the Eastern abutting Mississippi River.

They say that there are more cows than people (OK, that one is true).

But here’s what you don’t know if you didn’t grow up here, if you didn’t spend countless weekend mornings driving across this state to gymnasiums scattered around the Midwest: There’s no sunrise in the country quite like an Iowa sunrise. When a state is this flat and you can see this far, your perspective changes. You might be focused on the exit ahead of you, but 20 miles ahead, you see that first bulb of orange peek over the horizon as the rest of the sky somehow fades from black to dark purple. And then, with increasing speed, it all bursts into a gradient of yellows and pinks and blues. You see the full sky, no distractions, while the mile markers whoosh past.

It was on these roads, in the middle of nowhere, that Caitlin Clark spent many mornings of her adolescent life riding with her parents to basketball tournaments and practices. From West Des Moines to Wisconsin to Illinois to Nebraska and back again.

Anything within seven hours?

“Yep,” says Clark’s dad Brent, with real Midwestern dad energy, “that’s drivable.”

She texted friends and listened to music. They talked about Caitlin’s game and dreamed about her goal of getting to the WNBA, discussing what it would take to get there. It was all hypothetical then.

The beauty of this place is that it feels like you can see for a hundred miles. That’s also the thing that can drive you mad. Because when you’re on these roads and one silo replaces the next, it’s natural to question if you’re getting anywhere until you’ve arrived.

So it’s fitting that this place — the boring, flat, cow-riddled Midwest — became the epicenter of one of the biggest shows college basketball has ever seen. In the dark and cold of a typically dreary Iowa winter, it was Clark who filled every seat in Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Never mind the freezing temps or the 17 hours of darkness that descend upon this place in the peak of winter, Clark chose here. This winter, she made Iowa the most exciting show on hardwood.

Anywhere around the state, people can tell you when they knew. When they knew Clark was going to be big. When they knew she was going to be great. With the benefit of hindsight, everyone is prophetic.

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It’s a good time to be Sara Gaiero. Responsible for strategic oversight and management of ESPN’s NCAA women’s basketball coverage, Gaiero presides over a property with massive viewership momentum. And her enthusiasm is as palpable as that of USC star JuJu Watkins seeing no defenders in front of her in the open court.

Two of the four most-watched regular-season women’s college basketball games since 1999 have happened this month, including Caitlin Clark and Iowa’s win over Ohio State (which drew 3.39 million viewers on Fox) and Iowa’s win over Nebraska in the Big Ten tournament final (which averaged 3.02 million viewers on CBS). Two other high-profile women’s games on March 10 also drew tremendous viewership in the non-Clark category: ESPN averaged 1.96 million viewers for a feisty South Carolina-LSU matchup and 1.44 million viewers for USC’s win over Stanford. Sports Media Watch said that day was the largest women’s regular-season audience on the ESPN networks since 2010.

Overall, the season-long ratings story was sensational. ESPN platforms aired 13 games that surpassed 500,000 viewers, the most on record in a regular season. Games on ABC and ESPN have averaged 476,000 viewers in 2023-24, the most-watched regular season on ESPN platforms since 2008-09. Fox, NBC, CBS and the Big Ten Network also experienced growth.

“This moment feels different,” said ESPN’s Holly Rowe, assigned to cover Clark throughout the tournament. “The public interest in (Clark) is epic. … I don’t think I have ever seen such interest in a player. But then there are other storylines and players who are generating as much excitement.”

Gaiero, who previously oversaw the network’s WNBA coverage, said that other ESPN properties, from SportsCenter to digital and social media entities, are now coming to her staff to request women’s basketball content. That is a sea change.

“Honestly, four years ago when I was suggesting to my colleagues that we should talk about the WNBA and cover those stories from the Wubble,” Gaiero said of the 2020 season that was played entirely in Bradenton, Fla., due to the coronavirus pandemic, “there was a lot of pushing and negotiations from me and a lot of convincing people that this is a great story to tell. Now people are coming to me and saying, ‘Hey, what do you guys have on Caitlin Clark, (Stanford’s) Cameron Brink, JuJu Watkins and others?’ … It’s almost a reverse.”

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I wasn’t sure if the NCAA Tournament was going to let Iowa keep the Caitlin Clark record-breaking spot decal on the court or not. But, there it is. A pleasant, visual reminder of Clark’s range (and scoring prowess) for all the Hawkeye opponents.

On his shot that broke his school’s career scoring record, Northwestern guard Boo Buie launched a 30-foot 3-pointer near a sideline logo at Ryan Arena. It hit nothing but net and the crowd’s eruption on that Feb. 22 evening said everything about its importance.

To the fans in Evanston, it was a historical accomplishment. To Buie, he was just channeling the league’s biggest superstar in that moment.

“I watch her (Caitlin Clark) whenever I can when we’re not playing,” he told The Athletic at the Big Ten tournament. “I don’t know if you remember when we played Michigan; I hit a deep 3 for my record-breaking shot. I told myself before the game and my family, ‘I’m going to shoot it from the logo like Caitlin Clark.’ So that was for her.”

Buie considers himself a Caitlin Clark fan. So does Purdue’s Mason Gillis, Michigan State’s A.J. Hoggard, Penn State’s Ace Baldwin and plenty of other men’s basketball players in the Big Ten Conference. Clark’s admirers come from everywhere, and among Big Ten men’s basketball players their sincerity was as obvious in tone as it was from their rhetoric.

Gillis, who was voted the Big Ten’s sixth man of the year, joined several Purdue teammates to watch Clark compete in West Lafayette, Ind., earlier this year. Clark scored 26 points that night before a sold-out crowd and knocked down six 3-pointers in a 96-71 Iowa victory. Clark added 10 assists and 10 rebounds for a triple-double.

“She’s a generational player. She can do everything,” Gillis said. “She can score on all three levels. She’s got energy whenever she’s playing. She roots on her teammates. She’s just cool. She’s a good person and you can tell that through the media, how she handles all the tension and all of the pressure. She’s a great player. There’s nobody like her.”

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Fans lined up to get into Carver-Hawkeye Arena this afternoon — what an atmosphere this should be.

It’s a little after 11 a.m. on an unnervingly cold December day, and Isaac Prewitt exhales. Hands on hips, cheeks puffed out, the whole deal. His morning had been relatively easy for a while: Play dummy defense against pick-and-rolls; needle his friend about an incoming shipment of Gatorade Fit drinks; run some zone offense. A graduate student, whiling away winter break in a gym, doing a job that’s never work.

For the last few minutes, though, his job stinks.

Because his job is Caitlin Clark.

He wears a blue scout-team pinnie and pursues his pal with the Gatorade hook-up during an Iowa women’s basketball practice, slaloming around bodies trying to bump him off course, doing what he can to prevent a generationally gifted scorer from, well, scoring. At one point, Prewitt challenges a Clark 3-pointer so aggressively that his fingers interlock with Clark’s on her follow-through. She makes it anyway. Prewitt laughs.

Male practice players have been around women’s basketball for at least a half-century, mimicking the opposition’s schemes and personnel. They’re generally in the gym to help, not to win, often getting nothing except cardio for their effort. But unfair fights are one thing. How about a 6-foot-4 Stanford forward with an impossible wingspan and deceptive speed? A teenage prodigy at USC with a bottomless bag of answers? The Iowa guard who might score more points than any player in college ever has?

What, in fact, do you do about all that?

For starters, you keep coming back for more. After that deep breath, Prewitt lines up across from Clark. “Talk to me, talk to me,” he calls out, wary of a screen. It comes. Help defense does not. He lunges at Clark as she hoists another 3-pointer. She cashes it. And Isaac Prewitt throws his hands in the air.

Iowa coach Lisa Bluder has seen this before, and seen enough. “Let’s let blue get a drink,” she says.

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Holy Cross is located in Worcester, Mass.

The Crusaders' women's basketball program is no stranger to the NCAA Tournament. This is their 14th all-time appearance and second in a row.

Their First Four victory over UT Martin was the second in program history. Holy Cross, as a No. 11 seed, defeated sixth-seeded Maryland in 1991.

The Hawkeyes last played on March 10, when they beat Nebraska 94-89 in overtime to win the Big Ten tournament crown in Minneapolis. To avoid becoming rusty, the team scrimmaged the Iowa men’s basketball gray team (its practice walk-on squad) five days after the Big Ten women’s tournament.

What was the score? Nobody can remember that. But guard Kate Martin recalls the outcome.

“We won,” she said. “Two points.”

The scrimmage was important for Lisa Bluder to keep the Hawkeyes focused and avoid becoming stagnant with 13 days off between games.

“To me, it was really just about executing, about staying sharp with officials, timing, the scoreboard, everything like that going as game-like as possible,” Bluder said. “When you have a two-week break, you just don't want to get rusty. That's why we brought the officials in and kind of had a scrimmage. But I had kind of even forgotten about that.”

Caitlin Clark came to the floor at 12:36 p.m. CT to take her first warmup shots. It was six minutes after fans finally were let inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena and fans crowded around the floor to watch her take 3-point attempts.

The opening round will mark the final home game in Caitlin Clark’s storied Iowa career as the Hawkeyes host the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday and Monday. The Hawkeyes’ next loss will be the last collegiate contest for Clark, who the Indiana Fever likely will select No. 1 overall in the WNBA Draft.

That could bring significant pressure to avoid an unhappy conclusion at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. But that’s not how Clark said she is choosing to approach any upcoming games.

“It doesn't really feel like this is the end for us,” Clark said. “I feel like we're approaching it like this is very businesslike. We are here to win, get back to the Final Four.

“If you approach it in a way of this is the end, this is our last time playing on our home court, this is our last time hosting, you could get too caught up in the emotions of it. You can't be too worried about when it's going to end or how it's going to end. You've just got to enjoy the moments and live in the moments and enjoy the moments and don't let them pass you by.”

Joining Clark in an eventual exit are senior guards Gabbie Marshall, Kate Martin and Molly Davis, along with senior post Sharon Goodman. Marshall, who is one of the team’s fan favorites, said she agrees with Clark, but added, “We know this is our last tournament as well.”

“I think just knowing that this is the last time we'll go through this together as a team, just make the most of it, give it our all every night we're out there,” Marshall said.