By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

IOWA CITY — The best college basketball teams don’t get the immunity of November.

Don’t even think about it if you’re a top-10 team, certainly not if there’s a single digit in your poll ranking and definitely not if there’s a parentheses of first-place votes next to your name.

Off nights aren’t allowed. Rebuilding isn’t allowed. Searching for lineup combinations isn’t allowed. Your questions should have already been answered.

Iowa’s women’s basketball team found that out Thursday night. A 65-58 loss by the No. 2 Hawkeyes to Kansas State at home was very un-Iowa, coach Lisa Bluder said.

Those things happen, especially early in the season, and they have happened to the best teams in women’s basketball. No. 1 LSU and No. 2 Connecticut got derailed in the opening week, and then the Hawkeyes got dumped midway through the second week.

But you don’t get the benefit of the doubt when you occupy the premier poll spots in college basketball. The way the Hawkeyes lost — nine assists against 16 turnovers, 2-of-21 in 3-pointers, only two players in double figures in scoring and one of them was your national player of the year having one of the worst shooting nights of her career — ignited more than a little bit of angst that this season after a run to the Final Four and the national championship game was going to be bumpy.

All the Hawkeyes did on Sunday was go out and dominate Drake in a 113-90 win that had all kinds of records attached to it.

“I don’t think we really worry about outside noise,” said guard Caitlin Clark after the win. “That’s not what the program is built on. If you watch basketball, the best players in the world have bad games. Those teams have bad games. The Golden State Warriors have bad games. You don’t judge a team by one game, good or bad.”

The Hawkeyes are a mature group, but even the most mature players still learn lessons, and Clark said that loss was just the kind of education you should expect.

“All three years I’ve been here, we’ve had tough losses early in the year,” Clark said. “That allows us to be great at the end of the year, learning some hard lessons.

“It’s not fun, by any means. I don’t enjoy losing. I wish we didn’t lose. But I think it teaches this group ways we can get better, and it’s also a reminder you have to show up every night. People want to beat you. You’re the Iowa Hawkeyes, you were in the Final Four last year. You have a target on your back.”

Clark said this after scoring 35 points and grabbing 10 assists, the 39th game of her career with 30 points or more, the most in NCAA Division I history. The unanimous preseason All-American was 14 of 22 from the field, 5 of 11 in 3-pointers. She was also on quadruple-double watch at halftime, after a half in which she had six steals.

Clark finished with seven steals, the most of her career, and to everyone around her, a stunning number considering her defense.

“Hey, look at that,” Bluder joked.

“Who would have thought?” Clark laughed.

It was so unbelievable, Clark said teammate Kate Martin came up to her at one point and said, “Bro, how many steals do you have?”

“I don’t know, they just kept falling into my hands,” Clark said. “Hey, seven steals. I don’t think eight’s coming.”

Clark was coming off a 9-of-32 shooting performance — 2-of-16 in 3-pointers — against Kansas State, but she went back and looked at the video and realized, with a few exceptions, that she took good shots, they just didn’t fall.

“Sometimes you have nights when they don’t go in,” she said.

Clark wasn’t the only one with the big numbers. Martin had a career-high 25 points after she had zero against Kansas State. Sharon Goodman came off the bench to score 15 points. Guard Molly Davis had 10.

The Hawkeyes had 27 assists against 13 turnovers.

That’s more like it, Bluder said.

“I thought we came out and resumed playing Iowa basketball — high assists, low turnovers.”

The Hawkeyes started like a team that was irked by Thursday night. They shot 75 percent from the field in the first quarter, 65 percent in the first half, and put up a program-record 64 points in the half.

Drake coach Allison Pohlman knew this wasn’t probably the best time to be catching the Hawkeyes.

“It’s Captain Obvious,” she quipped. “It’s the white elephant in the room.”

The Bulldogs, who had a win over Iowa State last Sunday, shot 51.5 percent for the game and scored 90 points on one of the best teams in the nation, and yet it never really felt after the first quarter that they were threatening Iowa. That’s how good the Hawkeyes were, and it made Thursday feel like more of one of those it-happens moments more than a what’s-wrong hand-wringer.

Iowa is a team with depth. The starting lineup is Clark, Martin, Gabbie Marshall and Hannah Stuelke, and then whoever Bluder thinks deserves the fifth spot, whether it’s Davis or Sydney Affolter or Goodman.

Ten Hawkeyes played double-digit minutes, and all contributed something. That, Bluder said, is important as Iowa began a four-games-in-eight-days stretch.

Iowa has four wins and one loss, and the victories tell more of a story of the team than the one defeat.

So, yeah, the Hawkeyes don’t have the immunity of November. But it doesn’t matter to them.

Photo: Iowa’s Caitlin Clark reacts after hitting a late 3-point shot in Sunday’s win over Drake. (Brian Ray/hawkeyesports.com)