50 Iowa moments since Title IX: Iowa coach Lisa Bluder wins 800th career game

Editor’s note: This is 40th in a series counting down the Top 50 moments in Iowa Hawkeyes women’s athletics history in the 50 days leading up to the 50th anniversary of Title IX in June.

Lisa Bluder tried not to draw too much attention to her win over Michigan State in 2021.

“It’s just one more game,” the longtime Iowa women’s basketball coach said after the game. “It’s not like that big of a deal.”

But as the special T-shirts with her face on them, the confetti shower as she walked into the locker room and many hugs afterward gave away, it wasn’t just one more win.

It was Bluder’s 800th career win.

Bluder became the 14th Division I women’s basketball coach to win 800 games.

“I don’t even know how to comprehend winning 800 games,” color commentator Jamie Cavey Lang said on the Iowa radio broadcast after the final buzzer. “Just coaching 800 alone would be hard.”

Even the humble Bluder recognized the special accomplishment.

“It really gives you a time to kind of reflect a little bit,” Bluder said of the 800th win. “And you always reflect on the women you’ve been able to coach and you’ve been around. And you reflect on the staff that you have.”

The 800th win almost happened two weeks earlier against her former school Drake, but a COVID-19 outbreak canceled the game. Then Iowa lost to Duke in the first game after the pause.

“Well, I still wish we would’ve won at Duke,” Bluder said in the postgame news conference. “And I wish we would’ve beat Drake a few weeks back. But, you know, it is special being on your home court, obviously.”

With 819 career wins by the end of the 2021-22 season, she’s already about a fifth of the way to the next possible win milestone — 900, a feat only eight Division I coaches have accomplished.

“Let’s go get a hundred more,” former Hawkeye Sam Logic said in a video honoring the 800th win.

Nineteen down, 81 to go.

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