Lisa Bluder has enjoyed a ‘gratifying’ run back to the Final Four

ALBANY, N.Y. — Lisa Bluder has been too successful for too long to need validation at this stage of her career.

Satisfaction, though, that’s a different story.

Bluder got a Mulkey off her back Monday night when Iowa defeated LSU, 94-87, in an NCAA women’s basketball regional final at MVP Arena.

LSU Coach Kim Mulkey had eliminated Bluder’s teams three times — in 2015 (Sweet 16) and 2019 (Elite Eight) while she was at Baylor, and last year in the championship game.

“She's had tremendous teams, obviously, over the years,” Bluder said. “She’s an unbelievable hall-of-fame coach.

“It feels good, not that we beat her, but we got to go to the Final Four, and we beat a really good LSU team.”

The reward is a second straight Final Four appearance. No. 2 Iowa (33-4) will face No. 10 Connecticut (33-5) in a national semifinal at 8:30 p.m. (CT) at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland.

It might not be accurate to say that Bluder, 62, is in the twilight of her career, but she certainly is at her peak.

At Iowa, she has assembled a .675 winning percentage in her 24 seasons, at 527-253. The last six years, the Hawkeyes have gone 160-43 (.788) with four Big Ten tournament titles and two Final Fours.

Of course, players like Megan Gustafson and Caitlin Clark have helped. But Bluder had to recruit them, then develop them.

“I have much respect for what (Bluder) does with her players,” Mulkey said Sunday, the day before their Elite Eight encounter.

“I think the sign of a great coach is you adapt and you adjust to the personnel, and while each coach has a different style, if you don't adjust and adapt to each team you have, you become stagnant.”

Evolve or die. Bluder has thrived.

With the transfer portal and NIL, times have changed.

Kids have changed too, Bluder said.

“When we first started coaching, kids believed everything you said, and they did it because you said to do it, and now they kind of have to know the why, and that's OK,” she said.

“Parents are definitely more involved, and I'm fortunate that I've got great parents in my program that don't get involved.

“Social media has changed players so much, and they're more worried about their brand and that sort of thing than just ... there just weren't all the distractions that there are now. Kids have changed because they want to be treated ... I want to say more humanely than they used to be 40, 50 years ago. Coaches could do whatever they wanted and nobody really said anything.

“Now they're treated like people. They're respected a lot more. I think that's a really good thing.”

Even after last year’s run to the national final, Bluder faced some grouchiness from the fan base last summer when Iowa didn’t add a player in the transfer portal for 2023-24.

“We were looking for specific things in the portal. We didn't find what we were looking for,” she said.

“You have to be special to play at the University of Iowa. It's not just a basketball factory. We don't take just the best basketball players. We pick the best basketball players that fit our culture. We don't want to bring somebody in that wouldn't fit our culture.

“Again, our numbers were very few because we were only looking at very specific positions. We wanted to make sure if we brought somebody in, it was going to be somebody that was an impact player, not just a role player, but an impact player right away.”

It didn’t pan out. But the Hawkeyes didn’t slide.

“It does give us a little bit of feeling of satisfaction that, yeah, we had enough with what we had,” Bluder said. “That's gratifying.”

Comments: jeff.linder@thegazette.com