Title-game loss and foul officiating don’t alter the Hawkeyes’ 2023 story

DALLAS — One of the reasons sports are such beloved entertainment is they’re unscripted. Sometimes, though, that means a lot of people don’t get the story they want.

Iowa certainly craved something different from what it got from its highly anticipated national-championship game against LSU here Sunday. America pretty much did, too. If Caitlin Clark and the Hawkeyes couldn’t play their vastly entertaining game and win, at least have them be in it until the final horn.

And, please have a game officiated so well the officials weren’t noticed, rather than them taking stars from both squads out of their games to one degree or another.

The refs didn’t decide LSU’s 102-85 championship win over Iowa in American Airlines Center, of course. The Tigers were really good, and earned their championship. They did what they almost always do on the glass, and they uncharacteristically made 11 of 17 3-pointers as well as a high percentage of 2-point jumpers.

LSU’s Kim Mulkey has coached four teams to national titles now with four completely different rosters, and that ranks as legendary. Her team didn’t get bogged down against Iowa’s defense the way No. 1 South Carolina’s did Friday night in the Hawkeyes’ semifinal victory, and unlike South Carolina, it made its great rebounding edge pay off in a big way.

How Mulkey — who should pay taxes to Dallas for the prime downtown on-court real estate she called home much of the game — didn’t get a technical foul for making contact with an official was interesting. How Clark did for flipping a basketball out of bounds without force during a dead ball situation was interesting, too.

"No player in this game should get a technical foul for that,” commentator Rebecca Lobo said on the ABC telecast.

It certainly wasn’t entertaining seeing Clark and Monika Czinano of Iowa and LSU greats Angel Reese and Alexis Morris handcuffed by foul trouble at various points. Reese’s second foul, late in the first quarter, was absurd. A nation that tuned into this game for the basketball wasn’t amused.

“Let them play” trended on Twitter during the game. That’s never good.

Clark’s technical came with 1:03 left in the third quarter immediately after Czinano was whistled for her fourth foul. The tech, which came after two offensive fouls to Clark, was her fourth personal.

“Obviously,” Clark said, “foul trouble is not really what you want in a national-championship game, especially for our two seniors (Czinano and McKenna Warnock) who have given so much to this program and had to finish their career on the bench. It's not something they deserved by any means.

“I thought they called it very, very tight. I don't know about the two push-offs in the second quarter. I'm sure they saw that I pushed off and they called it and whatnot, and then hit (me) with the technical foul in the third for throwing the ball under the basket.

“Sometimes that's how things go.”

Exactly. That Clark could fight through and still get 30 points and eight assists said a lot.

OK, the calling of that one technical and 36 personal fouls in this game will keep charcoals hot for a long time. We should perhaps be grateful the officials didn’t determine the result. Had the Hawkeyes lost on a controversial whistle or seven, we would have feared for Dallas Sunday night with as many Iowa fans as were here.

No, the Hawkeyes reached the ultimate game and ran into a team that played better. It happens. It happened.

Despite the final score, it wasn’t a rout. Despite LSU leading 59-42 at halftime, it wasn’t a rout. The Hawkeyes went on a 15-2 run in the span of 2:46 in the third quarter to pull within 65-57, showing who they are when they’re at their best.

But it wasn’t sustainable the rest of the way, so one of the best sports stories in the state of Iowa’s history was just one last step from becoming immortalized. It hurts to get so close and finish second, especially with so much fan-making and fun-making along the way. It happens. It happened.

“I'm very grateful for the season we had, and I don't want anything to take away from that,” Iowa Coach Lisa Bluder said. “We played the national-championship game.”

“I feel sick for this team,” said Iowa assistant coach Jan Jensen.

“Not that it’s myself or Lisa, but I know how much joy this team has brought to people. And you just feel like you let someone down. That’s what I don’t like.”

They didn’t let anyone down, though. You don’t give people as much excitement and enjoyment as this team did to be remembered mainly for the game that got away.

“It wasn’t in the cards,” Jensen said. “It wasn’t for lack of trying.”

The lasting story of this game for Iowa wasn’t the officiating, or taunting by Reese to Clark late in the game, or any kind of noise. It was that it unexpectedly was here, it competed from the season’s first play to its last, and it earned every bit of appreciation it got along the way.

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