Jan Jensen was asked about her team’s first half of Sunday’s game against Maryland.
“I’d prefer to talk about the second (half),” the Iowa women’s basketball coach quipped.
Yes, the second half against the eighth-ranked Terrapins was a lot better, and certainly a lot more fun.
But it was the dismal first half by the No. 23 Hawkeyes that made all of the difference in the 74-66 loss at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
The Hawkeyes (12-3 overall, 2-2 Big Ten) have been plagued by slow starts in their last two games. They survived being down 24-15 at the end of the first quarter in last Wednesday’s 80-68 road win against Penn State, but that was nothing compared to the chasm they faced in this game.
Iowa fell behind 13-2 early, then gave up an 18-1 run in the second quarter, trailing by as much as 25 points before being behind 48-27 at halftime.
And although a second-half fury got the Hawkeyes to within five twice — the last time at 71-66 with 45 seconds to play — the climb was too steep.
“I’m not happy with our starts,” Jensen said. “We didn’t start great at Penn State, and we didn’t start great today. And I’ve got to figure out why.”
“We definitely need to have some talks about how we started the past two games,” guard Sydney Affolter said. “We can’t have starts like that in the Big Ten. The Big Ten is so good. I thought we did fight to the end. The second half, we played much better. We outscored them in the second half too. So we’ve just got to mimic that and make that a full game of basketball. We can’t only do it for 20 minutes.”
Jensen took a lot of the blame for the first-half struggles, saying she was “too tight” because of the way the game was officiated.
“I thought they let it get really physical,” she said. “That’s not why we lost, but I think I got a little incensed. I think I’m learning, I’m learning and growing. So I couldn’t make them a little bit tight. So I’m going to take that.”
A common theme of Iowa’s losses this season have been turnovers — they had 21 in this one, 30 in a defeat to Tennessee, and 23 against Michigan State, numbers that can be catastrophic when playing against a team like Maryland (14-0, 4-0), off to its best start since the 2011-12 season.
Seventeen of the turnovers came from Iowa’s five starters, veterans who have played plenty of games in their careers.
“It’s a big concern,” Jensen said.
“We’ve got to make better passes and better decisions,” said Iowa guard Lucy Olsen, who led the Hawkeyes with 19 points.
It’s why Jensen wants to build off the second half.
“I do like that resilience,” Jensen said. “And, you know, that’s the thing. If you handle a loss right, it can really be helpful. And I’m just trying to make sure we handle it right, me included. And I think if we handle it right, we can draw on it. We can draw on the second half when we get into another dogfight later on, but what I really want to do is make sure that we don’t dig a hole like that, especially at home.”
