By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

IOWA CITY, Iowa — Jan Jensen doesn’t want to wait to play again.

A three-game losing streak is gnawing at the Iowa women’s basketball coach, and she wants her players to feel a little bit of the bite as well.

But Jensen wants another game, and now isn’t soon enough.

The 10th-ranked Hawkeyes, fresh off their 91-85 loss to Minnesota on Thursday night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, don’t play again until next Wednesday’s home game against Washington, and that’s a problem for Jensen.

“I hate bye weeks when we lose,” Jensen said. “Capital H to the A to the T to the E. But it is what it is.”

It’s been a while since the Hawkeyes (18-5 overall, 9-3 Big Ten) have won. The last victory came on January 25 over No. 12 Ohio State, and after that 91-70 win Iowa was tied for the Big Ten lead and heading west for some warm weather and games with USC and co-leader UCLA and then…

The two losses to the Trojans and the Bruins by a combined 35 points frustrated Jensen, and then came this game, when the Hawkeyes fell down by 20 in the second half before putting together a furious rally that ran out of time.

Ah, time. Jensen wants her team to know that there is plenty of time left in this season, yet also wants them to have urgency to their game.

“I think we have to guard with a lot of absolutism in our profession, because we’ve still got six regular season games left. A lot can happen, you know?” she said. “We can go 6-0 and we’re going to feel a lot better.”

“It’s a funny thing about age. I’m 57, I’ve got a lot of urgency about a lot of things. I know my time’s a-ticking. When you’re young, it’s hard to get that urgency. We’ve been talking about urgency since halftime of (the 81-69 loss at) USC. Age is one of the best ways to become urgent. But they’re young. They’re 18 to 22, ‘I got the summer,’ ‘I got next game.’ If you’re a role player, maybe, ‘I got time,’ or if you’re a starter, ‘I’ll get it. It’ll just happen.’”

Her players, though, do understand that the ticking of a season’s clock starts to get louder in February as March looms.

“I wouldn’t say concern,” said center Ava Heiden. “But, urgency. “We need to do what we can do, and we haven’t done that in the past few games.”

Heiden knows the solution.

“Recentering as a team, recalibrating, and then going forward and throwing the first punch,” she said.

“I’ll just say it’s our energy,” said guard Chazadi “Chit-Chat” Wright. “We try to wait to the last minute to just pick up the energy instead of coming out and hitting them hard.”

The Hawkeyes seemed to get off to a good start in this game, shooting 75% from the field in the first quarter. Yet they only led 25-24 at the end of the quarter as the Gophers (17-6, 8-4), who came in with a four-game winning streak, weren’t going to let Iowa get away.

Then Minnesota put together a 13-3 run to open the second quarter, building a 49-39 halftime lead that was a seed of doubt in the Hawkeyes’ minds.

Minnesota led for almost all of the final three quarters, shooting 51.6% for the game, including 10 of 14 in 3-pointers. The Gophers led 77-57 with 7:51 to play in the game and had a 41-28 rebounding advantage on the way to breaking an 11-game losing streak to their rivals.

“They came in here on a mission, and they delivered,” Jensen said. “Us? We, I think, are playing just a little bit of not to lose instead of to win. When we were cooking, we were playing to win.”

Jensen said she could see it in the huddles during timeouts.

“What’s happening is we were playing not to lose, and we just wanted to feel good again,” Jensen said. ‘We just want to get the win, and we’re going to be fine.’”

It isn’t a coincidence that this streak comes as the Hawkeyes, and Jensen, try to figure out life without starting guard Taylor McCabe, who was leading the team in 3-point goals this season before suffering a knee injury on the first play of the Ohio State game that will sideline her for the rest of the season.

McCabe was on the bench for this game — she undergoes surgery to repair the torn ACL in her left knee on Friday — but she is a missing piece in a puzzle that has become jumbled.

Jensen got 24 points out of Heiden, 20 points and 12 assists against one turnover by Wright, 15 points off the bench from Journey Houston and 14 from senior Hannah Stuelke. Those are numbers, she said, that should add up to win, but instead are the components of an equation of frustration.

“I just have to keep finding buttons to push,” Jensen said. “ Just haven’t found that continuity yet with that and we just have to look at all the things — if you’ve got a defensive lineup, if you have an offensive lineup. Are people better coming off the bench? Are people better starting? I think everything, I just have to look to give us the best opportunity to win.

“But I know we can do better.”

“I think it’s a long season,” Heiden said. “And so we;ve got to keep our heads down and stay grinding throughout it. Every team has lapses, but we just don’t want to make ours a long lapse.”

Photo: Iowa coach Jan Jensen reacts during Thursday’s loss to Minnesota. (Keith Gillett/Icon Sportswire)