Penn State women’s basketball (16-7, 7-5 Big Ten) fell to No. 2 Iowa (22-2, 11-1 Big Ten) 111-93 on Thursday night in Iowa City.
The Lady Lions led after the first quarter, but Iowa took over in the second period and never looked back. The Hawkeyes were unstoppable on the offensive end as Caitlin Clark (27) and sophomore Hannah Stuelke (47) combined for 74 points. For Penn State, Ashley Owusu led the scoring with 18.
How It Happened
After winning the tipoff, the Lady Lions got the scoring started when Owusu scored the first bucket on a second-chance layup. Iowa responded with its first points when Clark scored a three-pointer off an assist by Molly Davis.
After Iowa’s Stuelke scored to make it a three-point lead for the Hawkeyes, the Lady Lions got their first three-pointer of the game when Chanaya Pinto scored off an assist from Shay Ciezki to tie the game. The Hawkeyes responded by scoring back-to-back layups to make the score 9-5. Pinto scored a layup for the Lady Lions before fouling Iowa’s Kate Martin, who made both free throws to restore Iowa’s four-point lead.
After Jayla Oden scored off a fast break that led to a media timeout, the Lady Lions took the lead by one when she rifled a pass to Ali Brigham, who banked in a three-pointer. The Hawkeyes responded with back-to-back layups to retake the lead, but the momentum ended when the Lady Lions went on a 5-0 run on buckets from Alli Campbell and Leilani Kapinus to move back in front.
Iowa picked up the tempo and went on a 7-0 run to take a 22-17 lead with about a minute left in the first quarter. The run ended when Ciezki capitalized on a three-pointer off an assist by Campbell. Ciezki’s kept the momentum with another three and the quarter ended with Kapinus capitalizing on an Iowa turnover to give the Lady Lions a 25-23 lead heading into the second quarter.
The second quarter began with Penn State getting the first score of the quarter to increase its lead to four. However, Clark responded for Iowa with a three-pointer, which began a 7-0 run for the Hawkeyes and gave them a five-point lead. Iowa’s momentum ended when Kapinus found an open Grace Hall, who banked in a three to cut Iowa’s lead to three. After a three-pointer by Clark and a layup by AJ Ediger, Penn State suffered a huge blow when Ciezki left the game with an injury.
Despite the injury, the Lady Lions showed their resilience by going on an 8-2 run to cut the Hawkeyes’ lead to one. After the media timeout, Clark began to take the game over for Iowa as she went on to score seven straight points for the Hawkeyes. This streak began when she scored two free throws off a foul by Moriah Murray. She became very aggressive on offense and got rewarded when Owusu committed a foul after she scored a layup and the free throw.
The Lady Lions trimmed the lead to three, but the Lady Lions kept struggling to defend Clark as she hit from deep to increase the lead for Iowa to six. This bucket was the beginning of a 9-0 run for Iowa as it increased its lead to double digits with less than a minute to go. The Lady Lions stopped the bleeding when Hall found an open Marisa behind the arc and hit from deep to trim Iowa’s lead to single digits. Just before the quarter ended, Campbell committed a shooting foul on Clark with two seconds left and she knocked down both free throws as Penn State went into halftime trailing 55-44.
The Hawkeyes came out of the locker room very aggressive as Stuelke scored five straight points to extend Iowa’s lead to 16. The Lady Lions slowed down Iowa when Hall scored a layup and Owusu knocked down a free throw to trim the lead to 13. But Stuelke’s scoring streak would continue as she scored on back-to-back trips.
After a pair of Marisa free throws, Iowa kept its foot on the gas, scoring consecutive layups to increase the lead to 19 and force the Lady Lions to take a timeout. Coming out of the timeout, both teams struggled to score for more than a minute. The cold streak ended when Murray found an open Pinto in the paint for a layup.
Out of a media timeout, Iowa would not let the Lady Lions get back in the game, putting in four consecutive free throws to increase its lead to 21. The Lady Lions struggled to get anything going on offense as they went more than two minutes without a basket before Kapinus made an open layup.
A short Penn State run ended when Iowa scored a second-chance layup off a missed free throw. The Lady Lions went on a fast break and converted on a three-pointer by Marisa to trim the lead to 13. However, just before the quarter ended, Iowa crushed the momentum for the Lady Lions when Sydney Affolter knocked down a buzzer-beater three to end the third quarter.
The fourth quarter began with Iowa increasing its lead to 18 off a mid-range jumper by Martin. After Murray banked in a three-pointer to decrease Iowa’s lead to 15, both teams went back-and-forth for a minute as both teams capitalized on their scoring opportunities and the defense finally got a stop when Clark committed an out-of-bounds turnover, and the offensive possession that came from it led to a made jumper in the paint by Owusu which led Iowa to take a timeout.
Out of the timeout, Stuelke kept causing damage on the Lady Lions’ defense as she went on to score six straight points despite every attempt from the Lady Lions to decrease the deficit to single digits. After a made free throw from Stuelke increased the Iowa lead to 14, the Lady Lions forced Iowa to commit consecutive shooting fouls and Marisa and Kapinus would convert the free throws to cut the deficit to 10.
Opportunity was given to the Lady Lions to cut the deficit to single digits, but the Lady Lions struggled to get a rebound off the misses from Clark and this led to Kapinus committing a foul on Affolter. She went on to convert both free throws and Iowa would not look back after this.
Iowa’s scoring rampage would not stop as it reached the 100-point mark when Gabbie Marshall knocked down a three-pointer to increase the lead to 17 with less than 3 minutes to go and put the game out of reach for the Lady Lions.
The fourth quarter and game came to an end as the Hawkeyes emerged victorious 111-93.
Takeaways
- Penn State’s defense was a huge story in this game as it struggled to stop Iowa’s offense. The Lady Lions allowed a season-high 111 points and got dominated in the paint as the Hawkeyes scored 56 points in the paint.
- Ciezki’s injury had a major impact on the Lady Lions. Before she got hurt, the team was going back and forth with Iowa but afterward, the Lady Lions struggled on offense. They averaged 35% in field goal attempts and 32% from the three-point line in this game.
- Clark, last year’s Wooden Award winner, was not the star of the game. Instead, it was her teammate, Hannah Stuelke. She scored a career-high 47 points — the second highest single game total in Iowa history — as she went 17-20 from the field and 13-21 from the line. Clark, meanwhile, had a double-double with 27 points and 15 assists as she closes in on the NCAA scoring record.
What’s Next?
The Lady Lions will try to rebound from consecutive defeats when they head to Madison to take on Wisconsin at 3 p.m. EST on Sunday, Feb. 11. The game will be livestreamed on on BTN+
