Sydney Affolter, Lucy Olsen’s hot shooting fuels Hawkeyes’ win over Michigan

IOWA CITY — Outside the Crisler Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., it was a brisk 36-degree day.

Inside the 12,707-seat arena, Iowa women’s basketball (19-9, 9-8) benefited from scorching-hot shooting as they secured a 79-66 road win over Michigan (19-9, 10-7) on Wednesday.

Sydney Affolter amassed career-high 24 points on extremely efficient 9-for-12 shooting. That included 11 points in less than a two-minute span toward the end of the first quarter.

Affolter tied her previous career-high of 18 points before the end of the first half and also finished with 11 rebounds en route to her sixth double-double of the season. She attributed it afterward to being “confident in myself.”

“I’ve been in the program for four years now and played with a lot of great players,” Affolter told Big Ten Plus. “So when my time was up, I was ready to go. … But I can’t do it without my teammates. They gave me some great passes.”

Lucy Olsen, meanwhile, had 16 points in the second quarter alone to give the Hawkeyes a seemingly comfortable 49-32 halftime lead. The Villanova transfer finished with 20 points on 8-of-16 shooting. She was 4-of-6 from 3-point range.

Iowa’s lead grew to 21 early in the third quarter before Michigan showed more life in the second half. The Wolverines strung together a 15-2 run to quickly slice the Hawkeyes’ lead from 19 points to six in roughly a three-minute span. Iowa, after shooting 19-of-33 in the first half, shot 6-of-16 in the third quarter.

Michigan’s shooting cooled off in the fourth quarter, though, as the Hawkeyes broke away for their fifth consecutive win against the Wolverines. Iowa had the lead for all but 57 seconds of Wednesday’s win.

Outside of Affolter and Olsen, the Hawkeyes shot 14-of-31 (45.2 percent) from the field and 2-of-8 from 3-point range. Hannah Stuelke chipped in 13 points on 4-of-9 shooting and five rebounds. Ava Heiden had six points on 3-of-5 shooting in six minutes off the bench.

Iowa — a No. 7 seed in ESPN’s most recent bracketology projections — now has five Quad 1 wins this season. The only Big Ten teams with more Quad 1 wins are No. 2 UCLA and No. 4 USC.

Jan Jensen’s group will conclude the regular season against Wisconsin on Sunday. The Badgers have not defeated the Hawkeyes since the 2006-07 season — back when the hot-shooting Affolter was only three years old.

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com

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