What Jan Jensen and the Iowa seniors said the day before their regular-season Carver finale

IOWA CITY — Reality is setting in. Time is growing short.

Senior Day was Sunday for four members of the University of Iowa women’s basketball team. The regular-season home finale is Thursday, against Illinois (tipoff is 8 p.m.).

Then it’s the final regular-season game, Sunday at Wisconsin. Then the Big Ten tournament, Selection Sunday and the NCAA tournament, however long that lasts.

Those four seniors — Taylor McCabe, Jada Gyamfi, Kylie Feuerbach and Hannah Stuelke — met with the media Wednesday, as did Coach Jan Jensen.

Here are the high points:

McCabe’s creative side

Since her career ended prematurely, the result of a knee injury Jan. 25, McCabe has gone public with her recovery.

“I’ve started blogging about it,” she said. “I have a platform for that. The first video got more than 100,000 views.”

The name of the series?

“My ACL Recovery Blog,” McCabe said.

As for the recovery itself?

“I was off crutches after 10 days, which is pretty impressive,” she said. “Now I’m just walking really weird.”

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Gyamfi’s maternal side

Like McCabe, Jada Gyamfi will miss the remainder of the season due to injury.

Even in her younger days in the program, Gyamfi had a maturity to her beyond her years. Now, as a senior, that “mother hen” role has evolved.

“I’ve taken a step back from my player identity,” she said. “I’m making sure everybody gets a hug. I can tell when somebody is having an off day.”

“There are a lot of similarities between teaching elementary school and this. I’m student-teaching kindergarten right now, and they’ll tell you come crazy things. When I’m around my 20-year-old teammates, they will do the same thing.”

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Their future selves

Each of the seniors were asked where they viewed themselves in 10 years:

McCabe: “My dream 10 years? I think it would be a crazy engineering job. I want to travel. I think a lot of doors will open. Since I got hurt, a lot of people have reached out with some exciting opportunities.”

Gyamfi: “I want to be a teacher, mold young minds. Everything else will iron itself out.”

Feuerbach: “The most important thing, I want to be happy, whether I stay in sports or slide out of it and into the marketing world, happiness is key.”

Stuelke: “I’ll enter the (WNBA) Draft and see how that goes.”

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Big Ten coach of the year?

Coaches and media will select the all-Big Ten teams in the coming days.

That includes player of the year (UCLA’s Lauren Betts is the likely choice) and coach of the year (not as easy of a decision).

An obvious candidate is Cori Close of UCLA, since the Bruins have wrapped up the title and more than likely will go undefeated in league play.

Two other prime possibilities are Dawn Plitzuweit of Minnesota, and Jensen.

In two years, Plitzuweit has taken the Gophers from 5-13 in the Big Ten to 12-5 (with one game to go).

As for Jensen: Iowa was not picked in the top five in the preseason polls. The Hawkeyes head into the final two games in a second-place tie.

How will Jensen vote? “I’m going to take the Fifth on that,” she said. “There are a lot of people who have done a lot of things to get from Point A to Point B.”

Guyton’s return to Carver

Illinois’ arrival means the return of Aaliyah Guyton, the Peoria native who played for the Hawkeyes for one season before transferring closer to home.

It’s a similar situation that Nebraska men’s player Pryce Sandfort faced last week. Sandfort dealt with chants, many of them nasty, in the Huskers’ game at Carver.

“I would hope there’s none of that at all (toward Guyton),” Jensen said.

“I think she’s a really cool kid, a really great player. I have nothing but respect for her.

“I wish her nothing but the best, but I hope she doesn’t have her best game against us.”

Guyton is averaging 19.6 minutes per game, scoring at a 6.4-point clip.

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Comments: jeff.linder@thegazette.com