Leistikow: 5 thoughts ahead of Iowa’s NCAA Tournament game against West Virginia
Leistikow − The past two years of second-round NCAA Tournament games at Carver-Hawkeye Arena have created extremely difficult circumstances for the Iowa women’s basketball team.
On the surface, one might expect a third straight goal in Caitlin Clark’s final college home game.
No. 8 seed West Virginia (25-7) brings its confident mentality and on-ball defense to Monday’s 7 p.m., ESPN-televised game against Iowa (30-4), with a berth in the mix. The NCAA Sweet 16 tournament is coming up.
“We were all happy on the defensive end. That’s what we want to do,” West Virginia’s Lauren Fields said. “We steal from each other when we steal.”
Iowa is the top seed in the Albany Region 2 and will face fifth-seeded Colorado next Saturday with a win. But the Hawkeyes will likely be without Molly Davis, their second-best ball handler, for the fifth straight game after she injured her right knee against Ohio State on March 3. That could be a notable absence. Sydney Affolter has filled Davis’ starting role well, but she’s more of a small forward. That puts more responsibility on Clark to handle West Virginia’s constant full-court defensive pressure.
“If Molly can’t go, we just have to hope that everyone stays calm and stays out of trouble,” Iowa head coach Jan Jensen said, referring in part to Clark’s expression of extreme frustration in Saturday’s 91-65 rout. opening victory over Holy Cross. “I think Caitlin is up for the challenge. She was under a lot of pressure. She will admit that (Saturday) was not a great night for that.”
Clark knows the West Virginia press will be Iowa’s biggest challenge on Monday.
“The most important thing is to get stops defensively so they can’t establish their pressure,” Clark said.
The Mountaineers have the best scoring defense Iowa has seen all season, allowing 57.6 points per game. They are No. 1 in the nation in turnover margin, at plus-8.5 per game. They are second in the country in steals, with 13.8 per game.
West Virginia’s top four scorers all have at least 76 steals this season. Iowa has only one player with a score above 40 (Clark, with 61).
West Virginia guard Jordan Harrison said stopping Clark involves “standing your ground, being aggressive, being present when she makes the catch.”
Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year JJ Quinerly said Clark’s goal is to “just keep her in her weak spots. At the end of the day, she will receive her score. We know that. You just have to keep the other players.”
Iowa’s second-round NCAA Tournament history is now famous. Two years later, the two-point home loss to No. 10 seed Creighton still stings. Last year’s 74-66 win over No. 10 seed Georgia belonged to Clark, making a clutch shot in the tense final minute. The Hawkeyes were early 16 1/2-point favorites but they knew they had to be wary against a pressure team like West Virginia that could wreak havoc.
“I think if we get locked in by the press, we’ll be fine and eventually they’ll have to take it down,” Affolter said. “But the pressing teams can smell blood. If you (show) fear, they will chase you. We are all confident we can crack the press.”
‘About the ‘send your stuff to Caitlin Clark’ comment
You may have seen the documentary or at least the meme of Michael Jordan reflecting on the slights during his final game with the Chicago Bulls in 1998 and him saying: “That’s all I need. … And it became personal for me.”
Clark’s personal fire and competitiveness have been compared to Jordan’s, and for good reason. More and more people are looking at that side of her as her star grows.
So even though West Virginia coach Mark Kellogg explained his comments after the NCAA Tournament bracket got underway — when he told his team and those gathered, “Send Caitlin Clark packaging” – chances are she took those comments personally and added them to her tank.
Kellogg said he received hate e-mail from people perceived to be pro-Iowa following the comments. After West Virginia’s first-round win Saturday against Princeton, Kellogg pointed out that the excerpt began with whispers about the Mountaineers being seeded No. 8 after a 24-7 season: “That’s not must be the purpose. I’m not a trash talker – I’m not out to get Caitlin Clark. It’s not Mark Kellogg versus Caitlin Clark. Something unexpected happened in the room… with our seeds, that’s how it all started. It really wasn’t the seed that many people in the room were expecting.”
Iowa will take on West Virginia in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Once getting to Iowa City, West Virginia HC Mark Kellogg addressed his 'I told them, win one and let’s send Caitlin Clark packing' comment. pic.twitter.com/BNyWzc9AKH
— Chelsie Brown (@ChelsieTBrown) March 24, 2024
Kellogg said his children love watching Clark and called her “the greatest scorer in basketball history.” He was amused by the controversy leading up to Monday’s game. Yes, he knew that Iowa was playing at home.
“Everybody said, ‘Well, she’ll stay home if we win.’ It was all so funny,” Kellogg said. “You know how social media works. The clip gets shorter and shorter. And finally ‘Mark Kellogg is calling Caitlin Clark’ or something.”
The arrival of Addison O’Grady is an important development for Iowa
After the Big Ten Tournament championship and before Iowa knew its potential first- and second-round opponents of the NCAA Tournament, the team had time to work on itself. Iowa associate head coach Jan Jensen also said the team has tried to attack opponents that are larger than the Hawkeyes. Of course, the team with the largest size is No. 1 South Carolina on the other side of the bracket. The other is No. 2 seed UCLA if Iowa advances to the Elite Eight of the Albany 2 region.
One of the beneficiaries of that time off appears to be Addison O’Grady. Iowa will need her if the NCAA wins continue to pile up. O’Grady was so good and important in Saturday’s first-round match that she was asked by head coach Lisa Bluder for the honor of placing the “IOWA” sticker on the next line in the frame after the game.
“Her confidence is a big part of the way she plays,” teammate Hannah Stuelke said of O’Grady. “She is a great basketball player and she has to believe that. She can do anything.”
With Stuelke (no points) ailing, O’Grady posted a season-high 14 points on 7-for-9 shooting in just 14 minutes off the bench. That total is just 2 points shy of her career record of 16 two seasons ago. O’Grady, at 6-foot-4, brings more size to the Iowa lineup than anyone else on the roster. That’s her ongoing challenge. O’Grady credits Jensen, a renowned front court coach, for helping her.
“She is a whisperer, as she is known. She just got me physically and mentally ready to go,” O’Grady said. “… She always reminds us how valuable we are, how good we are, how ready we are for these moments.”
There were conflicting reports about Stuelke’s absence in the final 26:41. Bluder said she didn’t feel well. Stuelke said she had a migraine but admitted she was hit. O’Grady mentioned that the trainers told her that Stuelke’s “knee didn’t feel right,” which is why she started the second half.
On Sunday, Stuelke said she was “absolutely” ready to play West Virginia after eating Wig & Pen taco pizza and sleeping after the win at Holy Cross.
“I was really excited, especially because I had limited minutes (Saturday),” Stuelke said. “I’ll be able to go back there fully. That’ll be really exciting.”
Kylie Feuerbach planned to stay up late Sunday night for a good cause
Ahead of Iowa’s round of 32 game against West Virginia, redshirt junior forward Kylie Feuerbach is preparing to become a big fan of Yale men’s basketball… again.
Feuerbach’s boyfriend is John Poulakidas, who had one of the top performances in the first round of the NCAA men’s tournament. Poulakidas scored a season-high 28 points in the 13th-seeded Bulldogs’ upset of fourth-seeded Auburn, the Southeastern Conference tournament champion. Yale is scheduled to face San Diego State on Sunday night for a spot in the Sweet 16.
Feuerbach grinned as he thought back to his antics, in the bedroom, in his pajamas and watching Poulakidas make one big shot after another. She said teammate Gabbie Marshall streamed her reaction on FaceTime.
“It was a very sweet moment for me even though I wasn’t in the match, because I knew how much effort he put into his craft,” Feuerbach said. “He’s a lights-out shooter.”
Feuerbach is from Sycamore, Ill., and Poulakidas is from nearby Naperville, a suburb west of Chicago. They knew each other in high school through basketball and had been dating for about two years. Yale is playing in Spokane, Wash. It was a wild time as both players reached Sweet 16 berths within 24 hours, two time zones apart.
“We were both locked in,” Feuerbach said. It’s difficult to talk right now because we’re both busy. It’s a fun time and we just want both of us to experience it.”
Clark, a basketball addict, lived with Feuerbach and offered her perspective on Yale’s success.
“It’s funny,” Clark said. “My favorite thing is hearing Kylie scream on TV about Yale men’s basketball. It’s crazy. I took a video of her screaming on TV, it’s amazing.”
Caitlin Clark: Due to join a monster game?
That seems a little crazy considering the likely national player of the year is averaging 29.7 points and 12.3 assists over his last three games. But Clark knows she hasn’t had a dynamic shooting performance since Feb. 28 at Minnesota, when she fired a 33-point shot on 8-of-14 shooting from downtown on the night she surpasses Lynette Woodard as Division I women’s basketball’s all-time leader.
Starting with the Big Ten Tournament, Clark “only” connected on 14 3-pointers in 51 attempts, a rate of 27.5% — well below last season’s 39.3% clip over a four-game stretch this match.
Clark’s final home game as a Hawkeye is sure to bring plenty of attention, and that’s usually when she’s at her best. She scored a career-high 49 points on February 15 against Michigan, the night she surpassed Kelsey Plum’s iconic NCAA record of 3,527 career points.
Clark enters Monday’s game with a chance to add to Plum history. With 1,081 points this season, she needs 29 points to surpass Plum’s single-season mark of 1,109 set in 2017.
