Grieving ends for Hawkeyes; time to get back to work

IOWA CITY — Lisa Bluder gave her team, and herself, a day to grieve.

'Obviously, this isn't the press conference I wanted to be having,' Bluder said Tuesday afternoon at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, a day after the Iowa Hawkeyes narrowly missed the NCAA women's basketball tournament. 'It's a tough situation, knowing we were one of the last four teams left out, maybe the last one left out.

'But it is what it is, and we've got to move on. We've got to make the most of it, or we're going to have a short-lived WNIT experience.'

Instead of a ninth consecutive NCAA bid and an 11 or 12 seed in the Big Dance, the Hawkeyes (19-13) host Ball State (21-9) in a first-round WNIT game at 7 p.m. Thursday.

The Hawkeyes were still disappointed Tuesday, but not entirely surprised.

'We knew the chances weren't in our favor,' Whitney Jennings said. 'It was hard watching the selection show (Monday) and not seeing our name come up.'

Ally Disterhoft said, 'I'm going to be truthful, I was disappointed. We went from being completely out to being back on the bubble and that got our hopes up. When we saw that (bubble teams) Princeton and St. Bonaventure were in, and that Purdue was an 11 seed, it didn't look good.'

In hindsight, the Hawkeyes probably were one win away from the NCAA. They lost a double-overtime game to George Washington. They let four Big Ten road games (against Michigan, Michigan State, Indiana and Minnesota) get away after owning double-digit leads in the second half, with Minnesota prevailing on a buzzer-beater by Rachel Banham. They lost twice to Penn State, the 11th-place Big Ten team.

Had the outcome been reversed in any of those games ...

'There were four or five games we definitely should have won,' Disterhoft said. 'Coach Bluder says that every possession matters. And in some of those games, every possession truly mattered.

'This is going to motivate me the rest of the time I'm at Iowa. But we can't dwell on it now. We've got to get up and get ready to work.'

Iowa will be making its first WNIT appearance since 2005, when it reached the semifinals.

'It's a better tournament than it was then,' Bluder said. 'Women's basketball is deeper. There will be a lot of good teams in this tournament. Ball State is a good team.'

l Comments: (319) 368-8857; jeff.linder@thegazette.com