By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

Iowa’s women’s basketball team followed a five-game losing streak with a five-game winning streak.

Getting through the highs and lows is part of any season, but this is a little extreme.

Still, coach Jan Jensen said on Wednesday, it’s all about staying steady.

“I think the key is always trying to, as much as you can, stay in the middle,” Jensen said. “It’s most important when you’re in a low peak to stay in the middle. But I think you have to have discipline to remain there at a high peak. Because anything in life, when it shifts to extremes too much, it’s never really great.

“One of my favorite quotes is, usually nothing is ever as bad as it seems or as good as it seems, but somewhere in the middle reality lies, and I think that served me well pretty much over my career.”

The Hawkeyes (17-7 overall, 7-6 Big Ten, 29 NET) have certainly improved their NCAA tournament chances. They are 3-5 in Quad 1 games, and 8-7 overall in Quad 1 and Quad 2 games.

They have done that by surviving a slide in January that could have damaged the season.

“They’ve really always believed that we’ve been closer than farther,” Jensen said.

This always felt like it was going to be an up-and-down season as Jensen, in her first season as head coach, had to put together a rotation of veteran players in new or increased roles and newcomers learning the nuances of a new program.

The biggest difference over this current stretch has been in the offense. The Hawkeyes have scored 80 or more points in three games during this winning streak after averaging 64 points in their five losses.

“When you kind of hit that synergy, when you start to kind of feel like they’re reading each other better, they’re just getting way more comfortable, and you never know when that’s going to hit,” Jensen said. “I’ve learned over the years with our particular offense and I said this at the beginning of the year, it’s like a fine wine. It really usually gets better with age.”

That’s why Jensen didn’t make radical changes, on either side of the ball, during the losing streak.

“There’s been tweaks, but nothing wholesale, nothing like, ‘Oh, man, we’re throwing the baby out with the bath water and starting over,’” Jensen said. “I never felt we needed to do that. I just really felt like we had to keep looking on what we had where we had it, and then I think the key is always to try to highlight your strengths and hide your weaknesses. And we weren’t doing that very well in that streak at the beginning of the Big Ten run. I think we’re doing it a little better now.”

Iowa gets to see both ends of the Big Ten standings over the next three games. The Hawkeyes play Rutgers (10-14, 2-11, 107 NET) at home on Thursday, then play at No. 9 Ohio State (20-3, 9-3, 15 NET) next Monday followed by a home game with top-ranked UCLA (23-0, 11-0, 5 NET) on February 23.

“By no means am I, or is anybody in our staff or on our team, taking this game (against Rutgers) lightly, because we know how the middle of this Big Ten is so, so tough, and the bottom (teams), they want nothing to do than to feel (a win). And it’s interesting now, right? Because not everybody can qualify for the Big Ten tournament. So there’s different people playing for different things, and so there’s different pressure levels.”

Photo: Iowa’s players celebrate a basket in their win over USC on February 2. (Keith Gillett/Icon Sportswire)