By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

IOWA CITY, Iowa — The options were running out.

Iowa had spent the first three quarters of Saturday’s NCAA women’s basketball tournament first-round game trying to shake a team that had an answer for every run, one that had taken the literal and figurative heat of a sold-out arena and practically embraced it, a team that had 30 wins on its resumé and knew that the 31st would be history.

The final option for the Hawkeyes was their honorable-mention All-American who has been the best option all season.

Ava Heiden scored a career-high 29 points in the 58-48 win over Fairleigh Dickinson, but it was the 12 consecutive she scored in the fourth quarter that saved the season for the second-seeded Hawkeyes.

Iowa (27-6) was up 42-36 in the fourth quarter when Heiden scored her first points of that climactic run — two free throws with 7:51 to play — then every field goal she had in that stretch came when FDU (30-5) gave its final thrusts of its relentless day.

The Knights were within 44-43 when Heiden scored inside with 6:08 left. They were within 48-46 when Heiden scored twice in the span of 31 seconds, sandwiched around a Kylie Feuerbach blocked shot at the other end of the court.

When Heiden made two free throws with 3:12 to play, the Hawkeyes were up 54-46, and although eight missed free throws in the last 1:23 added one final scare to the day, they had escaped.

Heiden is one to always deflect praise — she made sure to mention that senior Hannah Stuelke, who had 13 points and 16 rebounds, has “broad shoulders” that can carry the Hawkeyes on the inside.

“I’m working on carrying that as a leader, too,” she said.

It was a heavy load, given the significance of this moment and what a historic loss it could have been.

No 15 seed has ever taken down a 2 seed in the women’s tournament, but here were the Knights, who just kept coming and coming until the Carver-Hawkeye Arena clock had reached its final zeroes.

Iowa coach Jan Jensen pulled out the “survive and advance” cliché in the post-game press conference, a way to express that she knew just how close the Hawkeyes came to being taken down.

“I just told them the most important thing is we found a way to get it done when we really weren’t playing our best,” Jensen said.

But it was what Fairleigh Dickinson coach Stephanie Gaitley said Jensen said to her that seemed to resonate more with how dire the situation was for Iowa.

“The one comment that Jan made to me on the way out, she said this is why we got to get off the home courts,” Gaitley said. “We got to go neutral (for the first two rounds of the tournament). That’s a pretty big statement to say when you’re the team that earned that home court.”

Carver-Hawkeye has proven to be a hothouse for the Hawkeyes in the regular season and the postseason with its sellout crowds, but it was real heat that consumed much of the pre-game and in-game story line.

Temperatures outside the arena were in the 80s — unusual for March in the Midwest and especially striking considering on the night of the NCAA selection show last weekend most of the state was being shut down by a blizzard — and inside the courtside temperature reportedly reached 90 degrees in the arena that lacks air conditioning in the main bowl.

“Coming out for warmups it was like a smack in the face how hot it was in there,” said FDU guard Ava Renninger.

Iowa then smacked the Knights with an 18-3 run in the first 6 ½ minutes, and this looked like it was getting out of hand and was going to stay that way.

But there is a danger to FDU, a team that had won 22 consecutive games coming into the tournament. A mid-major school with that many wins has seen everything that can come at a team, especially in the crucible of conference play.

So when Gaitley called a timeout at the end of Iowa’s initial surge, the Knights were sweaty but not wilting.

“We kind of went into that timeout and just everyone took a deep breath,” said Renninger, who said she needed at least one towel and sometimes two every time she came off the court because of how much she was sweating. “You got on the court, you felt the fans, you felt the atmosphere and now it’s time to dig in. Teams are going to go on their runs but we have to buckle down and play our basketball.”

And then the Knights closed the first quarter with a 14-2 run, and it was clear this wasn’t going to be thanks-for-coming-you-15-seed.

“Stephanie Gaitley is one of the best to ever do it — 550-plus wins,” Jensen said. “So the game plan was sound, and they’re not going to go away offensively. If you’re going to get a little tired defensively, eventually they’re going to get loose.”

FDU outscored Iowa 9-7 in the second quarter to trail 27-26 at halftime

“That’s when I kind of knew,” Jensen said, “that we just had to ride this thing out.”

Gaitley knew her team had gotten itself into a position to win.

“The comment I made, “Are we hungry or satisfied? Are we satisfied we’re just right there? Or are we hungry to finish this?’” Gaitley said.

She smiled.

“I was just proud to see the kids be hungry,” she said.

Iowa made its first four shots of the third quarter to build a 35-26 lead, and with the Knights missing their first nine shots, surely this was the end.

Then FDU scored seven points over the final 3:16 of the quarter, while Iowa went scoreless for the last 7 ½ minutes, the Hawkeyes’ lead was two points, and there was one quarter to play.

The Knights had 18 field goals in the game, and 10 were 3-pointers, as pesky as Iowa expected.

“As a small ball team they do a really good job of hitting those threes and so they can make up pretty big deficits pretty darn quick,” Heiden said.

The Hawkeyes were running out of scoring options. They were 1 of 13 in 3-pointers for the game, and FDU’s defense was giving the mirage, Jensen said, of containing Iowa’s inside game.

“I think that they did a nice job of sagging off and trying to give the illusion that you kind of can’t pass it into the post,” she said. “If you have a post at the high and a post at the low, they’re kind of sagged off and letting the pass to the high post be made. They’re kind of just sagging off. The pass to the post would have been open had we thrown it a little bit more.”

Jensen, in her second season as head coach, was Lisa Bluder’s associate head coach on the 2019 Iowa team when 15th seeded Mercer came to Carver-Hawkeye for the NCAA Tournament and led the Hawkeyes by four points in the fourth quarter before Iowa rallied behind center Megan Gustafson, the national player of the year, for the win.

The weight on that day was carried by an Iowa post legend. The weight on this day was carried by a sophomore who is heading down a similar career path.

“As a team,” Heiden said, “we find a way.”

Photo: Iowa’s Ava Heiden gets to the basket in the second half of Saturday’s NCAA Tournament win over Fairleigh Dickinson. (John Gaines Photography)