By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

It didn’t take Jan Jensen long to find Iowa’s problem as she analyzed the video from Saturday’s NCAA Tournament first-round win over Fairleigh Dickinson.

The 58-48 near-upset was still fresh for Jensen as she watched the video a few hours after the game, but there was something that wasn’t visible on the screen that she knew was there with her team.

“They are very sensitive,” Jensen said. “When they feel like they’re letting me down or their teammates down or the fan base down, that’s when they kind of get in trouble. It’s a beautiful trait, but it’s not great when you’ve just got to kick you-know-what.”

March can be as much about the mental game as anything else, and Jensen knows that. It’s why she stressed to her players going over the scouting report on Sunday that they have to have a different mindset heading into Monday’s 1 p.m. (CDT) second-round game against Virginia at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Jensen pointed out the lack of ball movement that plagued the second-seeded Hawkeyes at various times on Saturday and nearly allowed Fairleigh Dickinson to become the first 15 seed to knock off a 2 seed in the first round.

“We revisited some things,” Jensen said. “We talked about that. But we then adjusted, and it was easy to see what we need to do. You saw some lightbulbs. I think you should see the ball move quicker, and I think … I’ve just got to believe that odds are going to be in our favor that we’re going to shoot the ball a little better.”

But the Hawkeyes will need to be a little bit looser against the Cavaliers, who have already won two games in this tournament and are enjoying themselves during their stay in Iowa City that started when they arrived a couple of days before their Thursday First Four game against Arizona State.

“I just saw things that are pretty fixable,” Jensen said of her review. “But it’s not just, ‘Oh, we need to pass better, we need to penetrate and kick better.’ Yeah, we do all that, but that all looks a lot better if we just get our mindset right, and that’s typically the hardest thing, I think, even in our lives.

“If you’re having a heck of a bad day or a bad stretch, everybody is like, you’re good, you’re good, you’re fine, just go get a cup of coffee, you’re good. But inside, you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, that sun seems a little distant.’ So that’s really kind of what we talked about, trying to free them up.”

The Hawkeyes seemed in good spirits when they met with the media. They had spent the time after Saturday’s win trying to physically and mentally recover from the escape.

“I think that we have a lot of tools at our disposal that we can use,” said center Ava Heiden, who had a career-high 29 points in Saturday’s game. “I went in the hot and cold tub yesterday. Iowa was gracious enough to give us massages, so we were able to get those this morning.”

“Mine is this afternoon,” said guard Chazadi “Chit-Chat” Wright.

March is also about confidence, and the Cavaliers are full of it. They defeated Arizona State 57-55 on Thursday, then came back with an 82-73 overtime win over Georgia on Saturday.

Virginia coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton challenged her team after the loss to Clemson in the ACC Tournament to come together for the postseason, and the Cavaliers have done that.

“You do have to be together,” she said. “That’s the way that you make a run in March. That’s how you win in March. You have to be together and it’s not just in the game. Outside of the playing, outside of game time, outside of practice, outside of all that, you have to be together. You have to have good camaraderie. Good synergy. Good vibes within the group. I think that’s very important.”

Guard Kymora Johnson, the Cavaliers’ leading scorer, said scheduled team-bonding activities have helped.

“We had tables set up in the team room,” Johnson said. “We had coloring books out for the people who just wanted to be quiet and color. We had a Skittles game where you had to separate all the Skittles by color. It was getting really intense.”

Johnson nodded to teammate Sa’Myah Smith, who was sitting next to her in the press conference.

“She lost, I think, every game,” Johnson said as Smith laughed.

Monday’s game will be the third in five days for Virginia, but again, it’s all about the mindset, Agugua-Hamilton said.

“Playing three games, you want to be playing in March, so it doesn’t matter,” she said. “If we had to play every day, we would. They’re not tired. I tell them that all the time. I say that in the summertime or even in preseason. ‘Come on, you’re not tired.’

“Nobody’s tired in March, that’s for sure.”

“I think you can’t really get comfortable in the NCAA Tournament,” Johnson said. “We’re playing really good right now, clicking at the right time, but it’s really important to stay even keeled and not get too high or too low and I think we’re doing that.”

The Hawkeyes survived their low on Saturday.

“I’d say that yesterday there were a lot of different factors that we went through,” Heiden said. “I think sticking together, though, as a team in this crazy month of March is going to be the biggest thing for us. The team that goes the farthest is not the one that’s the most talented all the time. Normally it’s the one that’s the most together. So that’s going to be our goal throughout this time is just keep our camaraderie high and play for each other.”

Photo: Iowa’s Ava Heiden (left) and teammate Hannah Stuelke react during Saturday’s win over Fairleigh Dickinson. (John Gaines Photography)