Lisa Bluder’s circle of Iowa players didn’t get larger this year, but sure grew in performance

CLEVELAND — It’s a national-championship berth on the line, it’s superstar guard Caitlin Clark of Iowa against superstar guard Paige Bueckers of Connecticut.

It’s big stuff, this national semifinal late Friday night, and it needs no more buildup than that. The ramifications of the result are clear, and a second-straight national-championship game would be a remarkable achievement for the Hawkeyes women’s basketball crew.

I hesitated to write the following paragraph because those who discount any Caitlin Clark-led group of players open themselves to potential ridicule. Yet, I wondered two things.

Why didn’t Iowa get a big-time post player out of the NCAA transfer portal last spring when such a thing would seem so desirable to good big players? And, how could the Hawkeyes not taper off at least a little without three-year starting forward McKenna Warnock and four-year starting center Monika Czinano, and with no additions to their player rotation?

Iowa Coach Lisa Bluder insisted her team would be fine. You never heard even third-hand gossip about Clark expressing disappointment in her team not adding a transfer. That was after she lost Czinano, who so often ran a two-player offensive game with Clark that flummoxed foes.

That hole couldn’t be adequately filled by the returning players, could it? Yet, here are the Hawkeyes at another Final Four.

“We have all the confidence in our posts,” Iowa forward Sydney Affolter said Thursday at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. “We don’t need anyone else and no one has what we have.”

Hannah Stuelke is playing out of position. She’s a natural stretch 4, not a 5. In an ideal Hawkeyes world she would be a power forward who would spend most of her time on offense facing the basket. Addi O’Grady, Sharon Goodman and A.J. Ediger have taken turns backing her up.

Monday against LSU after Stuelke got in foul trouble, O’Grady went head-to-head with All-American Angel Reese and didn’t flinch. O’Grady was fearless, free of hesitation. It typified the Hawkeyes’ play in that win, and was a payoff for the faith Bluder and her players had in O’Grady and Iowa’s other bigs.

The Hawkeyes and Huskies will start a total of zero transfers Friday. In the Illinois-Iowa State men’s NCAA Sweet 16 game last week, six starters were transfers. That isn’t to single out those two teams. It was and is a common scenario in the men’s tourney.

“I think that’s a great thing about women’s basketball,” Bluder said. “In men’s basketball it’s one-and-done and they’re out. In women’s basketball you’re able to stay four years and build your brand.”

All winter, I kept thinking Iowa’s postseason run would end somewhere before Cleveland because the Hawkeyes would get taken out by a team with a really good front line. You know, like LSU’s.

There are reasons Bluder is getting a $100,000 bonus for taking a team to a Final Four, again. (By the way, that’s the same amount Iowa’s head football coach would get for winning the Rocket Mortgage Bowl in beautiful downtown Cleveland, or any other non-New Year’s Six bowl.)

Injured starter Molly Davis and rotation-player Kylie Feuerbach did transfer to Iowa before 2023, so the Hawkeyes aren’t averse to welcoming outsiders. It’s just not a priority. Nor is replacing players who transfer out, because few do.

“Everybody knows they’re a big part of our success even if you’re not wearing No. 22,” Bluder said. “Everybody feels important in our locker room, and that’s why you haven’t seen people jump ship with our program.

“And, I think you have to be really special to come into our program. We don’t invite just anybody into our circle. We say to some people that our circle can’t be bought. It can’t be a thing where you offer so much to be part of our circle.

“Our circle is really, really special, and we’re guarding that.”

Iowa forward Kate Martin started in a national-championship game last year as a senior. She and Gabbie Marshall came back for another season instead of moving on to their next stations in life. Did they really think they could scale the mountain again, that another Final Four was reachable?

“Yeah,” Martin said. “We did. While everybody was focused on what we lost last year, we were focused on what we had.

“When Caitlin Clark's on your team, I think anything is possible. When Coach Bluder is your coach, I think anything is possible. So I've always believed that we could make it back here since our season ended last year.

“Because, I mean, why not? You know, that kind of was our mantra last year, ‘Why not us?’ Why not us again?”

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