By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

ROSEMONT, Ill. — The ghost of Caitlin Clark is probably going to be with the Iowa women’s basketball team for a while.

The first question asked of players Hannah Stuelke and Lucy Olsen during Wednesday’s Big Ten basketball media days was about Clark.

So was the second question.

Eventually, questions about their own abilities and styles started to come out, but there would still be more questions about Clark to the players and to new head coach Jan Jensen.

Which is fine, Jensen said. She expects that.

“I think Michael Jordan is still part of North Carolina,” Jensen said. “I think they probably don’t go through a recruiting process where someone in that recruiting world doesn’t make some reference that Michael Jordan went there.”

Then Jensen added the next sentence, which has been the message to the Hawkeyes since this summer.

“This is here, and this is now,” she said.

It’s OK to embrace and celebrate what the Hawkeyes did during Clark’s brilliant career when she became college basketball’s all-time leading scorer, a two-time national player of the year who helped lead Iowa to back-to-back NCAA tournament championship games..

And she was part of a movement in women’s basketball that Oregon coach Kelly Graves said was like “riding the crest of a really big wave, and I think we need to keep that going.”

The Hawkeyes seemed to always be at the epicenter of that surge, but this is going to be a different team, and Jensen wants them to create their own story now that the history book is closed.

“Coach J says it all of the time,” Stuelke said. “‘We’ve got next.’”

“I think everybody wants to be the New York Yankees, right?” Jensen said. “It was kind of fun to be that the last couple of years, the favorite with those mature teams and the longevity, with Caitlin and Kate (Martin), Gabbie (Marshall), in that starting lineup.

“But it’s also fun to be the underdog. I think a lot of America always cheers, typically, for the underdog. It’s kind of like your everybody’s with you to get really, really good, and you get too good, then everybody’s not with you anymore. They want the underdog. So I think they’ve done a beautiful job of just really embracing that we’re next.”

The dynamic of the Big Ten is changing. USC, with JuJu Watkins in line to take over the role of the nation’s best player, and UCLA are coming into the conference and are considered contenders for the national championship.

At the same time, Iowa’s dynamic has changed, not just with the departure of starters Clark, Martin and Marshall, but also the departure of head coach Lisa Bluder, who retired in late May as Jensen, her long-time assistant, ascended to the top spot.

Stuelke and Sydney Affolter are the only starters back from last season’s team, but Affolter underwent surgery on her knee recently and won’t be back until November.

“It’s the new opportunity,” Jensen said. “I think that Hannah and Syd especially, they really appreciated being part of the (last) era. But now there’s new opportunity. There’s new roles, a few more shots. A few more big defensive assignments that they may now get. And I love to see them leaning in and being ready to hopefully surprise some people. But certainly, just lean into being as good as they can possibly be.

“And I couldn’t be happier with their mindset.”

Iowa’s schedule at Carver-Hawkeye Arena is a sellout again, a fact that made Jensen smile.

“I think what we’re seeing is that those of our fans that have been there on the board, they’ve been there, and they’ve stayed, and they’ve invited others to come, and now people are sticking with us,” Jensen said. “And I think for me, as a first-year coach, I couldn’t be more thankful.”

The next wave, Jensen said, is already here.

“I think we’re still a work in progress,” she said. “I don’t really even know the starting lineup yet, who I want that to be. But I do think what’s important is, the hallmark of what this program has been built on, we try to play fast and we try to play fun. And I think they’ve always played with an understanding that it’s a game and to have a joy for it.

“And I think when we play like that, good things can happen.”

Photo: Iowa coach Jan Jensen answers questions during Wednesday’s Big Ten media days.