Hawkeye women go cold at Penn State, lose 71-55

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — When the game heated up, Iowa went cold.

Ice cold.

Up 18-13 after the first quarter and down by one at halftime, 32-31, the Hawkeyes hit 1 of 10 field goals in the third quarter, went scoreless for 8 minutes and 35 seconds and were outscored, 17-0, during that span.

The result was a 71-58 Big Ten women's basketball loss at Penn State, which picked up its first conference win of the season.

'We had been struggling against the zone but we came out and we actually played well against the zone,' Iowa Coach Lisa Bluder said. 'Then Penn State went player-to-player and we struggled with that.'

Iowa was outscored, 39-27, in the second half, falling to 10-6 overall, 1-2 in the league. Penn State improved to 11-4, 1-2.

'This isn't the way we wanted to start our Big Ten season,' Bluder said. 'We will have to do a lot of soul-searching and try to figure out what is going wrong so we can fix it before it is too deep in the year.'

The Hawkeyes shot just 38.2 percent in the game, including 10.5 percent from 3-point range. They came into the game shooting 32.9 percent from long range.

Jaida Travascio-Green led the Nittany Lions with 16 points, hitting 5 of 10 3-pointers. Amari Carter chipped in with 13 and Teniya Page added 10. Sierra Moore came off the bench to score 10 points. Peyton Whitted had a game-high nine rebounds as Penn State out-rebounded the Hawks, 42-30.

Megan Gustafson paced Iowa with 21 points, hitting 7 of 12 field goals. But Ally Disterhoft, who came in averaging 17.3 points per game, connected on just 2 of 9 field goals and finished with four points.

Tania Davis added 14 points for Iowa, Kathleen Doyle 11.

'Megan continues to try to carry the load for us and we need other people to step up a little bit,' Bluder said.

Iowa also turned the ball over 18 times.

The Hawkeyes return home Wednesday, hosting Illinois at 7 p.m. The Illini toppled Iowa, 70-65, on Dec. 28 in Champaign, Ill.