Taylor McCabe, Lucy Olsen team up for 36 points in Iowa’s win over UNI
McCabe got loose for five 3-pointers, and Olsen had a complete performance in the Hawkeyes’ 92-86 win over the Panthers.
IOWA CITY — This week’s holiday break is the final breather Iowa women’s basketball will have for some time. The beefed-up Big Ten slate has arrived, now ready to swallow up any team unprepared.
Jan Jensen’s No. 22 Hawkeyes charge into it with confidence while understanding the relentless grind that lies ahead in a conference with half its teams ranked or receiving votes in the latest USA TODAY Coaches poll. Iowa is right in the middle of that group with a chance to soar or sink.
The Hawkeyes (10-2, 0-1 Big Ten Conference) will get a favorable start at least, resuming league play at 2 p.m. Sunday against Purdue (7-5, 0-1) inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Iowa will then play on New Year’s Day at Penn State (9-3, 0-1) — a team Iowa has beaten 10 straight times — before the intensity cranks up Jan. 5 versus No. 8 Maryland (11-0, 1-0).
Handling the manageable opportunities is just as crucial as capitalizing on the eye-popping ones.
“It’s always an exciting time,” Jensen said Friday. “I think everyone went home and got recharged. Everybody needed it, coaches and players. But now coming back in, hopefully all the lessons we’ve learned through all of our wins and the losses can start coming together. And we can start stacking improvement, start stacking a continuity of how we want to play.”
Iowa’s last four games offer the perfect microcosm of that, further emphasizing how fine the line is between where the Hawkeyes are and where they want to leap.
With five minutes remaining, Iowa had a lead or was within five points against Tennessee (up 2), Iowa State (down 1), Michigan State (down 5) and Northern Iowa (up 1). The Hawkeyes finished 2-2 in those contests, winning the two at home while falling apart late outside of Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
With more tense end-of-game energy inevitably coming over the next few months, there has been enough positive evidence to suggest that consistency Jensen is hunting isn’t far away.
“They know if we’re correcting the things we all believe we’re correcting, and we keep our fight, I think they can lean on the confidence of the two (close) wins — but they’re not daunted by the losses,” Jensen said. “They’ve got a little chip about it. And I think that’s what is good about those last five minutes of all the games.
“We’re all trying to manage a little bit more depth. Sometimes you put a kid up at the scorer’s table (to check in), and the stoppage in play doesn’t happen. And then the kid she was subbing in for, she hits a couple or gets two big steals. But then they’ve played a stretch for six minutes, and you feel like they need a rest. We’re still learning how to get that cadence where we want it. But we need to learn. One-third of the season is done, so we’ve got to start feeling comfortable with what we’ve got.”
That productive urgency is amplified given how Iowa’s Big Ten schedule unfolds. The Hawkeyes’ slate undoubtedly gets harder as the weeks wear on, with four ranked matchups and two bordering road trips scheduled for February. As it stands, the Maryland game is Iowa’s only ranked matchup in January.
While the Hawkeyes aren’t expecting cakewalks anywhere, Iowa must begin this stretch on a positive note to allow more wiggle room when the foes are fiercer. Marquee games late in the season against the likes of USC, Ohio State and UCLA can be best digested if they remain resume enhancers and not resume saviors.
So it goes when conference play begins. The March Madness lights get a little closer. Any season hypotheticals become more real. The push to mold this campaign into something productive is a little more intense.
“It’s arguably the hardest part of the season,” Jensen said, “but it’s definitely the most fun part of the season.”
Dargan Southard is a sports trending reporter and covers Iowa athletics for the Des Moines Register and HawkCentral.com. Email him at msouthard@gannett.com or follow him on Twitter at @Dargan_Southard.
