By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

IOWA CITY, Iowa — The veteran players became spectators.

Iowa’s women’s basketball team was trying, and would eventually fail, to rally against Indiana in the closing minutes of the 74-67 loss on Sunday, and some of the players who had the most experience were on the bench watching.

Lucy Olsen, the transfer from Villanova who is Iowa’s leading scorer this season at 16.4 points per game, went out with 2 minutes, 20 seconds to play and didn’t come back.

Sydney Affolter, a starter in the closing weeks last season who played such a key role on the Hawkeyes’ run to their second NCAA national championship game appearance, left the game with 6:11 remaining, and didn’t return.

Addison O’Grady, third on the team in scoring at 12.5 points, exited with 6:47 left and didn’t return.

Kylie Feuerbach, another every-game starter this season, was long gone, out with 7:55 to play after playing just a little more than nine minutes all game.

If there was going to be a comeback, it was going to have to be done by freshmen Taylor Stremlow, Ava Heiden and Aaliyah Guyton, junior Taylor McCabe, and junior Hannah Stuelke, the lone starter remaining on the court.

It was an entertaining last couple of minutes, anyway, but the Hawkeyes fell short, suffering their third consecutive defeat, the longest losing streak for the program since 2018.

This current skid consists of a 74-66 home loss to No. 8 Maryland last Sunday, Thursday’s 62-57 clunker at Illinois, and now this game.

“All three of these losses have been such different losses, and we’re trying to learn a lot from each,” said McCabe, who led the Hawkeyes with 15 points. “I just think this team is so different, and I don’t think that we ever stopped fighting. And I think that the Iowa culture is definitely still there, and that’s something we’re going to keep building off. And I still think it’s pretty early on, and we have plenty of season left, so we’re not going to affect us too much.”

Maybe the culture is still there, but there isn’t a consistency right now.

Iowa’s veteran starting lineup of Stuelke, O’Grady, Affolter, Feuerbach and Olsen combined to go 10 of 29 from the field, finishing with 28 points. The freshmen who played — Stremlow, Heiden, Guyton and Teagan Mallegni — combined for 24 points.

Ten Iowa players were in and out all day — McCabe, at 35 ½ minutes, was the only player who went 30-plus minutes — a frequent occurrence these days as first-year head coach Jan Jensen pushes button after button, sometimes successfully, other times not.

The 23rd-ranked Hawkeyes — for now anyway, they’ll be exiting the national rankings on Monday morning — fell to 12-5 overall, 2-4 in the Big Ten. They’re in 13th place in the top-heavy 18-team league, with a coach struggling with an internal tug-of-war between long-time players unsure of their roles and young players who keep bidding for more on-court time.

“Our young kids are … man, they’re bringing it. They’re bringing it,” Jensen said. “And I think that’s the thing that really is promising. I feel badly for upperclassmen. I think they’re pressing. I think the young kids are bringing it, upperclassmen are pressing. And I think there’s a fine line between the competition of wanting to get minutes and then being able to manage that competition. And I think that’s where the pressing comes in.”

This whole thing, Jensen said, wasn’t unexpected. She had constantly warned of what reality would be coming, but as the Hawkeyes surged to a strong start, they were a sum of their individual parts — a flawed team, yes, but one that seemed to play through those flaws.

Now, it’s a team where the math isn’t adding up.

“I’ve been there,” Jensen said in her post-game press conference. “We just haven’t, all of us in this room, been there for about four or five years. So I stay steady by remembering when you have a lot of young (players), it’s a roller coaster.”

It was a fun ride in four years of Caitlin Clark, Kate Martin, Gabbie Marshall, etc., players who played and won big games, logged a lot of minutes, understood the nuances of a season, understood how it all fit.

Jensen was tasked back in May with solving this puzzle, and for a while this season those pieces fit, which is why the Hawkeyes got off to a 12-2 start.

Now, it’s a search for a solution, one that Jensen thinks she sees even if others don’t.

“You guys probably are looking at it that we’re a lot farther away then we’re close,” Jensen said. “And I kind of look at it as, we’re a lot closer than we’re farther away.”

It was another rocky start for the Hawkeyes, who had three turnovers and one missed shot on their first four possessions as Indiana took an early 6-0 lead. Feuerbach and Affolter took a seat 110 seconds into the game, the first of 27 lineup moves for Jensen.

“When you want to do so well, and you’re pushing to do so well, oftentimes it ends up being tighter,” Jensen said. “And so what’s happening? We’re starting games very tight. Unfortunately, it’s been a lot of our veterans that have made some tough passes, have made some tough decisions, and it’s putting us in a little bit of a hole.”

“So there’s pressure that comes with that, and then there’s a delicate dance of how long you ride that out. And so, yeah, I’m figuring that out.”

If there is a star in waiting for the Hawkeyes, it’s Stremlow, who had seven points, eight rebounds and five steals. There is a feistiness to her game, and the Hawkeyes need some bite right now.

“I think the team knows what they can expect from me, that I’m just going to give it my all,” Stremlow said. “And I think having that opportunity to come off the bench and bring some energy and just do what I can is definitely exciting, and knowing that the coaches believe in me is pretty cool, too.”

The quest for consistency continues with Thursday’s home game against Nebraska.

“We’re going to let this one hit us a little bit,” McCabe said. “We’re on a losing streak right now, so we’ve got to find a way to bounce back and snap that. But we’re going to bounce back, starting tomorrow, and keep bringing the energy.”

“I think about the old saying — you can wait for a break, or you can create a break,” Jensen said. “You know, I sure love to get a break here or there in this conference season, but I’ve got to keep working to create a break, too.”

Photo: Iowa coach Jan Jensen reacts to an official’s call in Sunday’s game against Indiana. (Keith Gillett/Icon Sportswire)