High-scoring Banham, Gophers up next for Iowa

IOWA CITY — This is not the remedy for a faltering defense.

After springing a leak in a 98-81 loss to Ohio State, the Iowa Hawkeyes hit the road to face high-scoring Rachel Banham and surging Minnesota.

'She's a great all-around player,' Iowa's Ally Disterhoft said of Banham. 'She puts up a lot of shots.'

And she makes a lot. Banham matched an NCAA Division-I women's basketball record with 60 points in Minnesota's 112-106 win at Northwestern last Sunday, then followed that up with a mere 32 as the Gophers (17-7 overall, 9-4 Big Ten) torched Nebraska, 110-73, Thursday at Minneapolis.

Tipoff is 7 p.m. Monday at Williams Arena.

With three straight wins and seven in the last eight games, Minnesota has risen to a third-place tie in the Big Ten.

Iowa's elevator is going the opposite direction. The Hawkeyes (15-10, 5-8) have dropped eight of 11 in a stretch in which they have allowed 77.1 points per game. They have dipped to 10th place in the league standings.

'I think you need to look at the defense,' Iowa Coach Lisa Bluder said after the Ohio State game Thursday. 'It's just being able to stop people, get the defensive stops.

'We had a lead at Indiana, but we didn't get defensive stops. All we have to do is defensively stop and win that game, and we don't. And obviously the stops against Michigan State and Ohio State were few and far between.'

Bluder said it's more than just a schematic shortcoming.

'Defense to me is about effort. It's about intensity. It's about getting it done. It's about not letting them score,' she said. We've got to teach better. Our coaches, we've got to teach better.'

A 5-foot-9 senior guard, Banham averaged 22.1 points per game as a junior, in 2013-14. She suffered a torn ACL in her 10th game last season, in time to gain a medical redshirt this year. She's as good as ever now, netting 26.1 points per contest. The Gophers are scoring at an 83.2-point clip.

The margin for error is growing narrow for the Hawkeyes' hopes of a ninth consecutive NCAA tournament. They have five Big Ten games left, then the Big Ten tournament.

'I hope that our team comes out and fights every single game,' Bluder said. 'Mental toughness as well as physical toughness is just as important out there in a game like this, but we have five games left, and there's absolutely no reason why we can't go 4-1.'

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