By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

IOWA CITY — The final act in the transition from then to now came with the unfurling of the banner to the sound of applause.

The commemoration of Iowa’s second consecutive run to the NCAA women’s basketball championship game last season now hangs in the north end of Carver-Hawkeye Arena next to the one from the previous year, the remembrance of the historic runs led by Caitlin Clark and coach Lisa Bluder.

Bluder, now retired, came out on the court and stood next to former associate head coach/now head coach Jan Jensen and watched as the new banner was displayed. Then after a few hugs and waves to acknowledge the cheers in the mostly-filled arena, Bluder was off to take her seat and Jensen gathered her team for its first game of the new season.

The Hawkeyes’ 91-73 win over Northern Illinois on Wednesday night was the first victory in a season that has its expectations built from the success of the recent brilliance, yet has all of the questions that a team full of newcomers and players in new roles will face.

“I thought the whole thing, we had some moments, but we just really lacked a lot of consistency,” Jensen said. “And that’s the thing I would probably grade is pretty low in consistency.”

There is a steadiness that comes with familiarity, and the Iowa teams of the past two seasons had that with the experience of Clark and Kate Martin and Gabbie Marshall and Molly Davis.

There are also the hills and valleys that come with the search for answers for teams lacking such institutional knowledge, and November is all about figuring out which combinations make for a smooth road by the time conference play arrives.

Jensen played 10 of the 11 players available for the game in the first half and that, she said, may have contributed to the scattered play.

“Part of it is with these games, you’re still trying to figure out who your people are, right?” Jensen said. “We have a lot of depth, but you’re trying to figure out how and when and who and what combination. So we’re kind of … sometimes we’re kind of messing with it, and then you’ve got something going, but you want to try that piece. So I think these games, maybe this game, we might have set everybody up for that inconsistency.”

Iowa trailed 16-15 45 seconds into the second quarter before going on a 14-0 run. The Hawkeyes were never threatened after that, but the Huskies never let them get too far away.

“I think this was a game where you can get internally frustrated because you feel like you should do this better, be better, and all those kinds of things,” Jensen said. “But I have to also take some breaths, because we are really young.”

Jensen has two starters back in Hannah Stuelke and Sydney Affolter, but Affolter wasn’t in uniform as she works to come back from offseason knee surgery.

Stuelke finished with 11 points, but all of those came in the second half after she missed all of the second quarter when she tweaked her ankle right as the first-quarter buzzer sounded.

That left the Hawkeyes to be carried by transfer Lucy Olsen, veteran-in-a-new-role Kylie Feuerbach, and a cadre of freshmen who could be the foundation of the next great run.

Teagan Mallegni had 14 points on 6-of-10 shooting. Taylor Stremlow had just two points, but five assists, a surprisingly steadying presence in her first regular-season game. Ava Heiden had four points on 2-of-7 shooting — a product, Jensen said, of the somewhat difficult transition post players face in the move from high school to college.

“I think Teagan and Taylor are really doing just a great job at coming in at their moments, and they’re feeling it, and they’re kind of just going with it,” Jensen said. “Ava is processing a lot.”

And, with Stuelke out, it put even more pressure on Olsen and Feuerbach.

Not that Olsen shows it. She consistently plays with a smile — “People tell me that all the time, that I’m smiling the whole game. I don’t really notice. I guess I’m just having fun,” Olsen said — and when the game was finished she had a game-high 19 points and seven assists, the numbers Jensen and the coaching staff expected when they got her out of the transfer portal.

Feuerbach has been a key bench player in her career with the Hawkeyes. Now there are more minutes, starter’s minutes, coming her way, and she finished with 14 points and nine rebounds in 33 minutes.

“I’m not always like expecting that to happen,” Feuerbach said. “I kind of come in with the same mentality as I always do, just working as hard as I can, and whatever the outcome is, I’ll always be satisfied as long as I’m working hard.”

“When they get their moment — all the work they’ve done in the dark, all the work they’ve done to prepare a Gabbie Marshall from last year, a Kate Martin, a Caitlin Clark … they were there, and part of it, but in the shadows,” Jensen said. “And then when they get their moment, I mean, it kind of makes me choke up.”

That describes so much of Jensen’s work. Which is why the players were waiting for her in the locker room after the game with streamers and noisemakers, the celebration of the first win for a long-time assistant who now commands a program that has always been good, with the banners from the ceiling to commemorate the history of the past two seasons.

“I think what is clear, and I’ve tried to tell the team last year, two years ago, you’re getting everybody’s best shot,” Jensen said. “This program will continue to get everybody’s best shot.”

It was part of then. It’s part of now.

“Now” had its first win.

“It’s nice,” Jensen said. “It’s nice to get that one.”

Photo: Former Iowa coach Lisa Bluder (left) and new head coach Jan Jensen watch the unveiling of the Hawkeyes’ Final Four banner from last season. (Keith Gillett/Icon SportsWire)