Jan Jensen is new coach, but Iowa women’s basketball keeps same identity

IOWA CITY — Now when there’s a coaching change in college athletics, the NCAA grants an immediate 30-day transfer-portal window for the athletes the coach leaves behind.

Which means the portal that had closed May 1 reopened for the Iowa women’s basketball team Monday when Lisa Bluder’s retirement as coach was announced.

Have any current players utilized it? It appears not. Did Lucy Olsen, a coveted offseason transfer from Villanova, opt to return to the portal knowing the head coach who lured her to Iowa was coach no more? No and no.

Which in itself is why the promotion of associate head coach Jan Jensen to head coach was the first slam dunk in Hawkeye women’s basketball history since, well, Bluder got the job in 2000.

Often, there is leeriness when a career assistant coach is elevated rather than a proven head coach, particularly at the level of Iowa in the women’s game. That’s a premier job, one you typically open to the world and all its agents.

This coaching-change, however, was as easy as any Iowa Athletics Director Beth Goetz will ever make.

Let’s say there’s a company in which the second-in-charge becomes the top banana, but the No. 2 was an unknown quantity to the outside world and those who worked with her or him were unsure the person had the right stuff to be No. 1.

That’s dicey all the way around.

Now let’s say No. 2 was respected, trusted, accomplished and beloved by the employees and public. No. 2 replaces a popular No. 1, yet everyone feels very good about the transfer of power.

That’s Jensen replacing Bluder. Nothing else would have made sense.

“It’s a big change,” Jensen said here Wednesday, “but most everything remains the same.”

There you go. Jensen has been a visible and vocal top lieutenant, during games and elsewhere. Many assistants stay in the shadows by choice or by their coach’s wishes. Jensen has been a public face and voice of the program, as well as a tireless recruiter.

You don’t have to explain who and what Jensen is to anyone who has followed the Hawkeyes. She was with Bluder here from Day One, and admitted Wednesday to “double-digit opportunities” to be a head coach elsewhere. She said she had two or three she had to think long and hard about.

Jensen wouldn’t and couldn’t leave whenever things approached being serious, and that was without any knowledge how long Bluder would stay on the job and if she would even be the replacement after it happened.

“I wouldn’t call this a planned succession,” Goetz said. “It’s obvious from an outsider’s perspective, when we think about how she’s been such an integral part of building (Iowa’s program), but that wasn’t something that had been predetermined.

“She didn’t walk into this feeling entitled to have this appointment. She knew she was ready, she was confident she could do the job, and wanted to make sure she shared what she wanted her vision to look like.”

The vision includes continuing to be in pursuit of Big Ten championships and deep NCAA tournament runs, of remaining a national player. “Chasing greatness” was a phrase Jensen used four times in her Wednesday press conference.

“I’m not shying away to be great,” she said.

“We’ve been busting it in a lot of different ways the last five years. Let me tell you, Raina and Abby (assistant coaches Raina Harmon and Abby Stamp) and Lisa, all of us, we just do what you must do if you want to chase greatness.

“I think that the name of the game for this level is you can’t win the race if you don’t have the horses, so it’s a lot about recruiting and making sure that our game plan that we’ve always had remains seamless, as well.”

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In Jan Jensen, ‘the easy choice is the right choice’ for Iowa

This isn’t a deal where the superstar is gone, the institution of a coach is gone, and a program does a slow but sure fade. The Hawkeyes still have some really good players, they’ll get more, and the new head coach won’t accept a lowering of a very high bar.

“I’m not going to reinvent the wheel,” Jensen said. “We’ve had pretty good success. But I’m going to put my own little stamp on it, right?”

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com