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With Lisa Bluder as its pilot, Hawkeye women’s basketball touched the sky
Bluder ended her career as Iowa’s coach Monday, leaving behind a program that has taken up residence in so many hearts
May. 13, 2024 5:25 pm, Updated: May. 14, 2024 7:28 am
Every story about Lisa Bluder today and this week will rely heavily on the numbers.
The 24 years at Iowa, the 18 NCAA tournaments, the last three Big Ten tournament titles and six overall, the two straight national-championship appearances, and more, more, more.
That isn’t how she’ll be remembered, though.
Bluder, her coaches, her players — the whole Iowa women’s basketball operation — has been imminently likable for a quarter-century. That’s the legacy.
I spent a lot of time observing and listening to Bluder and her players over the last couple seasons, seeing them in a fishbowl. They didn’t change, didn’t crack under pressure or scrutiny, didn’t look for places to hide or cliches to hide behind.
They kept smiling. They stayed joyful and communicative. They didn’t big-time anyone. They seemed to appreciate all the media obligations, the never-ending attention from fans, everything that came their way from celebrity drop-ins to all the children who just wanted to get close to them.
Common, that is not. It starts at the top, from a coach making it clear this stuff is supposed to be fun and that they should treat people the way they want to be treated.
The Hawkeye players of the last 24 years represented themselves and their team and their school the way any reasonable person would want.
All the winning was the entryway for fans to enjoy the team. Then the public got to know the coaches and players, and it was hooked.
Iowa women’s basketball obviously climbed mountains with Caitlin Clark, and was very good immediately before that with Megan Gustafson.
Rare is the program in any college sport that has two different National Players of the Year in a five-year period. That two such different players from such different places chose to be developed by Bluder at Iowa said everything about the coach and her assistants.
However, the Hawkeyes weren’t some dormant program that only started being good in the latter part of Bluder’s career. They were a Sweet 16 team nine years ago. They finished second in the Big Ten and won an NCAA game way back in her first season at Iowa, 2000-01.
Marion native Bluder came to Iowa with 16 years of head coaching experience at St. Ambrose and Drake, an upbeat attitude, and plenty of coaching acumen. She leaves in 2024 with that same outlook and a sensational body of work.
If you saw the “Full Court Press” documentary on ABC over the weekend, you got behind-the-scenes glimpses of Bluder in full coaching mode, as intense as any typical leader of a team and as disappointed and angry as anyone in the rare losing moments.
You don’t win 884 games if you aren’t an intense competitor. But when did you ever hear a former Hawkeye women’s player say her personal experience at Iowa wasn’t all it could have been? It’s been a program built on respect.
“Everybody feels important in our locker room,” Bluder said in Cleveland last month, “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.”
When people talk about someone’s “best coaching job,” it’s usually uninformed blather. It’s hard to distinguish one season from the next when it comes to how well a person coaches. The personnel every year is different, the behind-the-scenes challenges keep changing, and the opposition plays to win, too.
But these last unforgettable four years with Clark’s otherworldly play also showcased a coaching virtuoso. It was Bluder getting Clark to understand how to play and coexist with teammates who weren’t on her talent level, and of getting the rest of her players to believe in themselves and own worthiness.
The three weeks of this year’s NCAA tourney summarized it beautifully.
The Hawkeyes were in a meat-grinder of a second-round NCAA game at home against West Virginia, tied at 50 with 2:15 left. Keep your poise. Believe. The Hawkeyes won, 64-54.
Iowa trailed Connecticut by 12 points in the second quarter of their national semifinal this year. Poise. Belief. The Hawkeyes won, and with a defensive stop.
In Iowa’s previous game, LSU erased an early nine-point deficit and led Iowa 34-26 early in the second quarter of a much-hyped Sweet 16 clash. Poise. Belief. The Hawkeyes were tied at halftime and never trailed again. Backup center Addison O’Grady played fearlessly in the second half against LSU All-American Angel Reese.
Coaching.
Who besides the Hawkeyes themselves thought they could beat South Carolina in the national semifinals last year? With Monika Czinano and McKenna Warnock graduated and gone after that season, who a year ago besides the Hawkeyes really thought that they could return to the Final Four even with Clark?
So many of Bluder’s Hawkeyes in this century got more out of themselves than anyone had foreseen. That list is longer than the lines of fans who waited outside in the cold to get into Carver-Hawkeye Arena before their games last winter.
Do you think Clark would have cast her lot with Iowa instead of Notre Dame had Bluder not convinced her she could touch the sky in Iowa City?
And touch the sky, that program has done. It persevered for so many years in trying to grow fan support. Finally, the curtain that was used in Carver to make the arena feel more intimate for women’s games was put in mothballs, perhaps for good.
Hawkeye women’s basketball now resides in hundreds of thousands of hearts. Lisa Bluder built more than a winner. She molded something that makes people smile just by thinking about it.
How could you really do better than that?
Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com
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