Hawkeyes avoid disaster and hold off an upset bid from FDU

The Iowa Women’s Basketball team has been pushed to their limits (and upset) at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in the NCAA Tournament before. However, shades of ’19 Mercer, the Hawkeyes were forced to handle tense moments, while thoughts of a potential historic loss began to creep into mind. Luckily for wearing the black and gold, those thoughts never became a reality. In March, an ugly win is the same as a dominant one. The Hawkeyes avoided complete disaster, pulling out a 58-48 win to advance to the Round of 32 on Monday. As you might expect, head coach Jan Jensen wasn’t thrilled with the performance, but she took the glass half full approach.

“I’m just really pleased that we got the W. We found a way to win,” said Jensen. “What I told the players is there’s no time where the phrase survive and advance is more true than in March…I just told them the most important thing is we found a way to get it done when we really weren’t playing our best.”

If you tuned in for the first few minutes of the game, before changing channels, you probably would assume that the Hawkeyes rolled to a 30+ point victory. The offense was clicking early and Iowa connected on their first seven shots of the game, rolling out to an early 20-5 lead. Ava Heiden got off to a strong start with eight points on 4-of-4 shooting from the floor.

As quickly as Iowa jumped out to that 15-point advantage, it evaporated. The Knights, one of the best three-point shooting teams in the country, answered swiftly with four made threes in the span of 2:38 to close the gap to 20-17 after the first quarter. True freshman Reese Downey came off the bench and hit a couple of triples during the 12-0 run.

“As a small ball team, they do a really good job of hitting those threes and so they can make up pretty big deficits pretty darn quick,” said Heiden. “For us, though, it was our job to shut them down on defense and get rebounds and stops and eventually we found our groove with that.”

That run ended up being FDU’s most successful offensive stretch of the game. Unable to get much going against the Iowa defense, the Knights managed just 16 points on 6-of-30 (20.0%) over the second and third quarters.

Even with the defense stacking up plenty of stops, the Hawkeyes were unable to shake the NEC champs. The offense sputtered and, at times, almost completely died. They scored just a single point over the final 6:51 of the first half, going into the locker room with a 27-26 lead.

A quick 8-0 run, including consecutive baskets from Ava Heiden seemingly restored order in the third quarter, but another ugly stretch was around the corner. A 7:31 scoring drought to end the third allowed FDU to draw within 35-33 on a Rebecca Osei-Owusu layup in the final minute.

Over the middle two quarters, the Hawkeyes put up just 15 points on 7-of-28 (25.0%) shooting, while turning it over seven times. They were an uncharacteristic 1-of-13 (7.0%) from behind the arc for the game. The missing link was Chit-Chat Wright who only attempted four shots, finishing the game with just nine points.

“I can’t believe how many wide-open shots we missed,” said Jensen. “Chit-Chat, I think I called about six different plays for her, and she didn’t pull the trigger. We deferred. I think it was just on a really — that first big stage type of game, what I’ve been really working with Chat. When we’ve had our best runs in this season and really have done well, Chit-Chat has taken a good number of shots. She shot a great percentage and she doesn’t really defer.”

“We had some runs and then when we got really sticky, we didn’t pass the ball. We’d keep it on one side when the reversals were clearly open…. That’s when I kind of knew that we just had to ride this thing out.”

And boy did the Hawkeyes have to ride it out. Leading by just two points heading into the fourth quarter, the 15 seed’s 0-126 all-time record against 2 seeds became a relevant stat. With tension building inside the arena, how would the team respond?

Initially, they responded well. An Ava Heiden basket, plus the foul, as well as six made free throws between her and Hannah Stuelke pushed Iowa ahead 44-36 with just under eight minutes to play.

Fairleigh Dickinson had one last push left in the tank. An Ava Renninger basket was followed by a Kailee McDonald contested three and a transition runout layup to cut the lead to 44-43 with 6:24 to play. Jan Jensen called a timeout and gave her team a stern message.

“I had just a few seconds in my head to decide what’s going to work. Is it fire and brimstone or is it settling (them down). I went with a very stern message of, you’re here for a reason and you need to start acting and believing everything that got you here.”

“(I said) every one of you is thinking about a minute ago or we’re thinking about what-ifs. It is now. It is right now and I promise if you do these things, we’ll be fine. Thankfully we were.”

Down the stretch, the Hawkeyes put the ball in the hands of their future All-American center Ava Heiden. She scored 15 points in the fourth quarter, including 12 straight, carrying the entire weight of Hawkeye nation on her shoulders. Back-to-back buckets pushed the lead to 52-46, while a pair of free throws had Iowa inching their way out of historic upset territory.

“I think that Hannah and the guards were doing a great job finding me in the post,” said Heiden. “That was part of the game plan, that FDU is a little bit undersized, so we really wanted to capitalize on that, and I think we did a good job on that in the fourth quarter.”

The defense did its part as well, holding FDU scoreless on nine of their final 11 possessions. In the end, they did enough. Survive and advance.

“That last six, seven minutes, after I called a time-out, it was kind of the upperclassman that took over,” said Jensen. “I could just see, I felt a lot better, Hannah had a little chat with them, and it was Hannah, some of her play and Kylie had some really blue collar plays at the end, 50/50 balls that they just weren’t — this wasn’t going to be their last.”

The good news? There’s little time to think about what went wrong or how they should have won by more. The team will get together tonight and go over their Virginia scout. Throw this one out of the window because the Sweet Sixteen is on the line now.

“I think the Big ten Tournament was good practice for that,” said Taylor Stremlow. “However, you feel you played, however we feel our team played, good or bad, it’s in the past. Now it’s locking in tonight and moving on to be our best selves on Monday.”

On the night, the Hawkeyes shot 20-of-48 (41.7%) from the floor, 1-of-13 (7.7%) from three-point range and 17-of-29 (58.6%) from the free throw line. Ava Heiden finished with a game-high 29 points and seven rebounds, while Hannah Stuelke added a double-double 13 points and 16 rebounds.

Up Next, the Hawkeyes will look to advance to their third Sweet Sixteen in four seasons, as they will take on the 10th-seeded Virginia Cavaliers on Monday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Tip time and TV designation will be announced soon.