Big Ten tournament offers Hawkeyes opportunity to solidify top-4 March Madness seed

IOWA CITY — Caitlin Clark has two goals written on her locker in Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

“It says, ‘Big Ten champions, Final Four,’“ Clark said Sunday, “and what I need to do to get there.”

She can cross the first item off her list after Iowa won its first Big Ten regular-season title since 2008 with Sunday’s 104-80 rout of then-No. 6 Michigan.

Clark and the Hawkeyes can help their case with the latter, too, this week in the Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis.

Iowa’s first game will be Friday at 5:30 p.m. against the winner of Minnesota and Northwestern. With a win Friday, Iowa would play the winner of Michigan against either Nebraska, Illinois or Wisconsin.

The NCAA selection committee slotted Iowa as a No. 4 seed — good enough to be a host for the first two rounds — if the season ended Monday evening.

ESPN’s Charlie Creme also projected the Hawkeyes to be a No. 4 seed in his bracket released Monday morning.

“One more win in the conference tournament later this week should be enough for Iowa to host first- and second-round NCAA tournament games for the first time since 2019,” Creme said in his latest bracket projection.

That means the road to the Final Four would include two games in Carver-Hawkeye Arena, the same building that housed more than 15,000 fans on Sunday.

“If we can get home-court advantage for the NCAA Tournament, that’s huge,” Clark said. “Getting to do that again would be a lot of fun.”

The crowd had quite the impact on the Hawkeyes in the title-clinching win over Michigan.

"When we came here 22 years ago, we dreamed about a sold-out arena, and today you couldn't have scripted it any better,“ Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder said Sunday.

Clark and fellow guard Gabbie Marshall said they had “chills” coming out of the Carver-Hawkeye tunnel in front of the sellout crowd.

“I could not stop smiling,” Marshall said.

The fan support also makes the Hawkeyes — and their thousands of prospective ticket-buyers — a more lucrative choice for a top-16 overall seed.

Maryland, in comparison, had about half as many fans at its final home game of the season. Both Iowa and Maryland are projected to be No. 4 seeds in Creme’s bracket.

“I don’t think people realize a sellout like that is not something that happens everywhere in women’s college basketball,” Clark said. “That’s not something that happens very often.”

The difference between being a No. 4 seed and a No. 5 seed has historically been rather noticeable, partly because of the home-court advantage.

In 2018 and 2019 — the two most recent years with the top-four seeds hosting games — 75 percent of teams that made it to the Sweet 16 hosted the first two rounds. That included three out of four No. 4 seeds in both years.

When games were in a neutral-site bubble in 2021, only 62.5 percent of top-four seeds advanced to the Sweet 16.

March Madness positioning aside, the Hawkeyes wouldn’t mind winning the Big Ten tournament title this year, too.

“Obviously we’re going to enjoy this and celebrate this, but we’re going to get back to work,” Clark said. “Why not win two Big Ten titles?”

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