A good preliminary done, the real NCAA tourney starts for Iowa women’s basketball Monday

IOWA CITY — The College of Holy Cross women’s basketball team played before an announced crowd of 127 at Stonehill College last Nov. 29.

Little did those Crusaders — an apt name for a team of fighters — know then that they would go play before a loud gathering of 14,324 Saturday in Iowa’s Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Many in the capacity crowd paid Taylor Swift/Adele/Olivia Rodrigo tour prices on ticket markets to see an NCAA tournament first-round game, with only about 127 of those people rooting for Holy Cross.

Stonehill’s Merkert Gymnasium, this wasn’t. The Stonehill Skyhawks, the No. 2-ranked Hawkeyes aren’t.

Yet, the Crusaders were no more daunted playing Iowa in front of all those Hawkeyes fans and an ABC audience than they are by classwork at their 3,100-student school that touts “rigorous, personalized education.”

“Gutsy group,” said Iowa Coach Lisa Bluder.

“The way that we played against a perennial power, the face of women’s basketball, I can’t put into words how proud I am of our fight, how we competed,” said Holy Cross Coach Maureen Magarity.

Her team took an 11-10 lead, fell behind 20-11, then drew back to within 23-21 at the end of the first quarter. Iowa pulled away, of course, for a 91-65 win. But the Crusaders played nothing like a 38-point underdog they were expected to resemble.

Who was it raining in three 3-pointers in the last 1:33 of that period? That wasn’t the face of women’s basketball, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, for a change. Nay, it was Holy Cross guard Bronagh Power-Cassidy of Dublin, Ireland.

Power-Cassidy called Iowa “a phenomenal team” and Carver “an unreal atmosphere.” But she also said “We wanted to go out playing our style of basketball, play fearlessly regardless of the stage.”

This was a Crusaders team that forced Clark into six first-half turnovers. This was 5-foot-8 Holy Cross sophomore Kaitlyn Flanagan going 1-on-1 with 6-foot Clark in the paint in the third quarter and coming away with a basket.

Magarity’s Crusaders are Irish, at least in name. Another starter is named Cara McCormack. Meg Cahalan is in the Crusaders’ rotation, and Mary-Elizabeth Donnelly is a reserve.

But “Caitlin” is an Irish name, too. Clark was the player with the most temper on display based on her glares and gestures to the game officials, and her comments to them and herself.

She had 27 points and 10 assists, so the planet didn’t jump off its axis. But Clark admitted she wasn’t thrilled with her slow start or her team’s.

“Yeah, I was a little frustrated,” Clark said. “But I feel that comes from knowing what it takes to be where we want to be. From here on out, every single team is going to give us a really good game.

“I want to win and I expect us to be really good all the time.”

Yes, the 16th-seed from Worcester was unable to hang with Clark and her teammates for the duration. Clark’s shooting eye wasn’t at its sharpest, but her defensive eye was. She had two steals for lay-ins in a 30-second stretch early in the fourth quarter.

It was a reminder to Holy Cross that it may have a great school, but the NCAA tournament is where a player who pitches insurance in nationally televised commercials always wins in a 1-vs.-16 game.

This tournament is hard. If you looked across the women’s tourney Saturday, you saw higher seeds either behind or in unexpected scraps before pulling away.

No. 5-seed Oklahoma trailed 12-seed Florida Gulf Coast by 10 points after a quarter, then won. No. 4-seed Indiana led 13-seed Fairfield by just 38-34 at halftime before its 89-56 victory.

This was the Hawkeyes’ rust-shedder. Their real return to the hypertension of this tournament is here Monday night.

“Every single team is basically a Top 25 team at this point,” Clark said.

Iowa’s toughest game of its four wins in reaching last year’s Final Four was its second-round home contest, against Georgia, which almost had too much bulldog for the Hawkeyes.

Getting a first-round foe that refused to roll over probably was a good thing for Iowa. Business, as philosopher Jim Ross has said, is about to pick up.

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