Hawkeye women turn up the defense, squeeze UNI

IOWA CITY - The first 17 minutes of the Iowa-Northern Iowa women's basketball game were good enough for your office's ugly Christmas sweater contest. But Iowa turned that thrift store giveaway into something very fashionable with its defense in a 73-45 victory over the Panthers.

The Hawkeyes picked up the pressure at the end of the first half to take a 26-21 lead and then really caused havoc in the second. UNI went 12 consecutive scoreless possessions as Iowa bolted to a 38-25 lead that would have been much bigger had the Hawkeyes not been 3-of-13 in their first 12 possessions. During that dry spell UNI committed seven turnovers.

'It came down to turnovers,” UNI Coach Tanya Warren said. 'We knew coming in against a team like Iowa, who is extremely efficient offensively, our margin of error was very small. As potent as Iowa is you have to be able to score.”

'We struggled to get into the flow offensively, and with our turnovers that kind of took us out of it,” UNI's Madison Weekly said.

'We wanted to get out and be more aggressive in the passing lanes because they were kind of just walking it up and were able to pass the ball around without really attacking,” Iowa Coach Lisa Bluder said. 'So we said let's go out and try to get turnovers.”

Warren said she didn't expect Iowa to use so much of the aggressive, overplaying, trapping zone called 'Cats,” which gave the Panthers fits and led to 22 turnovers and 15 Iowa points.

'We were just trying to cause some havoc out there,” Iowa's Ally Disterhoft said. 'It's fun to play that way.”

Iowa put the game away for good with an offensive spurt in which it scored on 13 of its next 15 possessions and made 10 of 14 shots.

For the first 17 minutes UNI slowed the game as it got into its offense, frustrating the run-and-gun Hawkeyes.

'We didn't shoot the ball well so we weren't making them pay for slowing it down,” Bluder said. 'The second half we got a lot better.”

This was the eighth consecutive victory in the series for the Hawkeyes, who lead 18-2 overall.

Iowa (5-0) heads to Las Vegas to play Arkansas Friday and Gonzaga Saturday. UNI (1-2) is at the Hofstra tournament Friday and Saturday.