By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

IOWA CITY, Iowa — Fifteen thousand gold towels couldn’t erase Jan Jensen’s message.

Jensen knew there was opportunity available on Sunday, but she wanted to make sure her players didn’t think of themselves as the warm-up act for a celebration of history.

Iowa was going to be retiring Caitlin Clark’s jersey number 22 after the Hawkeyes played No. 4 USC in front of a sellout crowd, and so Jensen sat down with her players on Friday and talked about being the show before the show.

It’s been a season in which Jensen, in her first year as the Hawkeyes’ head coach after all of those years as Lisa Bluder’s top assistant, was stressing a we’ve-got-next philosophy, that the Clark era of back-to-back runs to the NCAA national championship game needed to give way to a new story to be created.

Jensen understood the significance of Clark’s impact on the program and her mixed roster — the returning players who got to go on the magical ride with Clark and others in the last two seasons, the transfer who came over for a taste of it in her final season, the freshmen who saw from afar what happened and wanted their own chapter.

But she also understood the significance of the game for a team that jeopardized its season with a long losing streak and was starting to climb back.

“We knew it was happening, but that was the day I kind of talked about how great it was going to be,” Jensen said. “I really wanted them to embrace it and just be, like, ‘How awesome is this moment?

“And so I talked a lot about the freshmen. I’m like, part of the reason you came is you watched her, and that was part of the excitement of that era. And you’ll get a feel of that. It’s a top-five matchup. This is why you came to have those. And then I looked at the upper class and said, ‘Now you know, you can lead the way, because when it kind of became Beatlemania with us at the end of that last year, we found a way (to win).”

The game would be 40 minutes, Jensen said, of “us versus USC.”

Then the Hawkeyes went out to practice in the arena, and they saw every seat was covered with gold Caitlin Clark 22 towels.

“So, after it was ‘40 minutes of us,’ we go out there and it’s 22, 22, 22,” Jensen said.

The players, Jensen said, got a good laugh out of it.

And then two days later “40 minutes of us” turned into 40 minutes of magic.

The 76-67 win over USC had the feeling of a defining moment of the Hawkeyes’ new era, of a new-but-old coach and old-players-in-new-roles and new-players-looking-for-their roles coming together for its biggest victory in what has been an unsteady season.

The Hawkeyes are 15-7 overall, 5-6 in the Big Ten, but taking down a heavyweight by snapping the opponent’s 15-game winning streak puts some impressive ink on a scattered resumé.

It was much bigger than that, Jensen said. It was how the Hawkeyes played — they opened with an 18-1 run, gave up a 17-1 run in the second quarter, then matched the Trojans with a push-and-pull of points before pulling away at the end.

“What it is is it’s such a great lesson, a life lesson,” she said. “Adversity is hard, but if you keep showing up, it’s going to turn and so that’s why I feel really grateful. I’m just so happy for them, because I just … I just really love coaching them.”

Carver-Hawkeye Arena was at its most raucous on this day, a throwback to the Clark days of logo threes and buzzer beaters and a top-five team last season that was the perfect sum of its varied parts.

That sum was back together in different parts of the arena. Clark had her seat in the media area, flanked by family and friends. Teammates Kate Martin and Gabbie Marshall were along the end line near the south basket. Monika Czinano, a favorite target of Clark’s passes in her first three seasons, was also near the court.

This was always going to be loud and draw a crowd, but it had to be experienced to truly understand.

“I noticed how loud it was at first,” said guard Lucy Olsen, who led the Hawkeyes with a season-high 28 points. “When I went out to shoot (before the game), there were already people in the stadium. I was like, ‘What is this? You aren’t supposed to be here yet.’ And then when we came out to warm up, it was so loud already. It was like, ‘My ears… I hope it’s a little quieter, because I can’t hear anything.”

And then the Hawkeyes opened on with that first run, and it became that moment when sound has feel.

You want to know how one possession went for the Hawkeyes? Hannah Stuelke missed a layup, and Olsen got the offensive rebound. Taylor McCabe missed a 3-pointer, and Stuelke got the rebound. McCabe missed a second 3-pointer, and Stuelke tracked down the rebound. Stuelke passed the ball to McCabe, who passed the ball to Sydney Affolter, whose 3-pointer went in, spun out, and then went in again.

Bedlam.

The Trojans seemed shaken — they missed their first 13 shots and were 2 of 22 from the field before finally getting some sort of rhythm.

“That crowd was going to be electric,” USC coach Lindsey Gottlieb said. “But we invited them to the party.”

Gottlieb had nearly copied Jensen’s message, but it had a different result.

“What we tried to say about this day was we didn’t shy away from this moment for Caitlin, but we tried to make the 40 minutes about 2025 Iowa against 2025 USC,” Gottlieb said. “And then we let them feel good on the offensive end.”

Then came the Trojans’ run that gave them a 29-28 halftime lead and led to some nervousness within the area. Yet the Hawkeyes always had an answer in the second half and never let USC escape — the Trojans’ biggest lead was 47-41 with 3:16 left in the third quarter before Iowa rallied.

This was also expected to be a show for USC sophomore JuJu Watkins, having her own career already of gaudy numbers and impressive skills. She had 27 points, but was 8 of 22 from the field, 1 of 7 in 3-pointers. The Hawkeyes sent different waves of defenders at her, and each seemed to take a toll.

“It’s not something I haven’t seen before,” Watkins said of her struggles. “I think it was that, and the atmosphere. I think it was an off night for our whole team, and I think that was a testament to the environment.”

The fourth quarter, when the Hawkeyes closed out the win, belonged to the pair of Olsen and Addison O’Grady, one a transfer and the other a former bit player on that collection of star power the last two seasons. Iowa outscored USC 25-19 in the fourth quarter, and Olsen and O’Grady had 23 of those points.

Olsen had 23 second-half points, hitting 8 of 11 shots, showing the mid-range game that made her a points machine at Villanova.

But there was a reason why Olsen came to Iowa, and Jensen reminded her of that.

“I know Jan talked to me a few times and said, ‘This is why you came here. Play your game. You’ve got this,’” Olsen said.

“I said, ‘It’s go time,'” Jensen said.

O’Grady, who had 12 of her 13 points in the second half, has battled for post time all of her career, but the last 10 minutes of this game inside belonged to her.

“If I’ve learned anything in these four years, it’s be ready when your number is called,” O’Grady said. “I’m just going to go in and do what the team needs at any time. Whenever the coaches decide to put me in, whatever I can do for the team, I’m going to be ready for it.”

“She’s got a difficult job,” Jensen said. “She’s started, she didn’t, we’re here, we’re there. And she’s stayed really ready. And what I love about it is, it’s a great lesson.”

It’s been a season of lessons. The Hawkeyes have won their last three games after a five-game losing streak that left Jensen searching for answers that now, maybe, she has found.

“Forty minutes of us,” as it turned out, said a lot about them.

Photo: Iowa’s Lucy Olsen (left) and Addison O’Grady celebrate a second-half basket in the Hawkeyes’ 76-67 win over USC. (Keith Gillett/Icon Sportswire)