By JOHN BOHNENKAMP
IOWA CITY, Iowa — The timetable is going to have to be different because the schedule demands it.
Iowa’s 73-48 win over Towson in Monday’s women’s basketball season opener showed that the Hawkeyes’ 4-out offense needs a lot better ball movement and a lot more activity.
Which is understandable because it’s the first game of a season for a team with six newcomers, four of whom played plenty of minutes in this game.
One problem — the 10th-ranked Hawkeyes get No. 2 Connecticut on the road Sunday. So improvement might have to be microwaved a little bit.
Jan Jensen, in her third season as head coach, recalled that when she ran this offense in her first season the Hawkeyes truly didn’t get comfortable with the scheme until “the fifth game of the Big Ten season,” and that the moment everything really clicked was a 76-69 win over No. 4 USC … on February 2.
The fifth game of the upcoming Big Ten schedule, and certainly February 2, seem a long time away from the first Sunday of the schedule on the road against one of the legendary programs of the sport.
“So it needs to be quicker,” Jensen said.
There has been progress, Jensen said. And there certainly needs to be progress before Thursday’s game against Eastern Illinois.
“It looks a lot better than it did in June,” she said. “ But you’re going to have moments like this. So we don’t have time. I’m not pleased. I’m not making excuses. We better figure it out. Certainly we better figure it out by Thursday, because Thursday needs to look a little bit better, right?”
Right. And the players know that.
“Again, this is a new offense this year,” center Ava Heiden said.
She immediately corrected herself.
“New … old … we’ve done it before, but it’s different from last year,” Heiden said. “We’re still finding some fluidity in the way that we’re playing, and we’re taking great shots. I think that, you know, they just didn’t fall tonight, and so as we’re working with setting more back screens and cross screens and all that sort of stuff, it will flow a little bit easier.”
The new, old, whatever offense is designed to take advantage of Iowa’s ability at the guard spots while opening the inside for Heiden, a first-team All-Big Ten selection last season, to have space to roam.
Iowa shot 44.6% from the field for the game, but made just 8 of 29 3-pointers, which allowed Towson to crowd Heiden. Heiden got just four shots, and finished with seven points.
But Heiden knew guard Dani Carnegie got 21 points, and Chazadi “Chit-Chat” Wright, sitting next to Heiden in the post-game press conference, scored 14.
“Three people in the paint feels a little bit difficult to work down low sometimes,” Heiden said. “But yeah, that opens up other people. Scoring isn’t the only thing I bring. Chat, Dani, any of these guys can score. And so if I’ve got people double-teaming me, then I’ll go set the ball screen for them. I’ll get someone else open. As long as the team wins, it doesn’t really matter.”
The Hawkeyes did win, but Jensen wants to see more fluidity with the offense.
“The ball really got stuck, and we wanted to try to solve any problem in one to two passes,” Jensen said. “No matter what you’re running, you need to get the ball shifted from one side of the floor to the other. And I think we were so antsy to try to get it to Ava. They were doing a good job of playing high, three-quarters, playing a little front, really sagging in, and we just weren’t able to make those reads. We were a lot more tunnel-visioned, and we were just not patient. And this offense really works the best when you’re running it for ‘my buddy.’ IWhen you run it for yourself, that’s when we get stuck.”
Eventually the Hawkeyes were able to pull away — they outscored Towson 10-0 to end the first half after the game was tied at 23, and 21-8 in the fourth quarter.
Carnegie, a first-team All-SEC player at Georgia last season, and Wright are veteran options for this team, but Iowa also got the first regular-season look at freshman McKenna Woliczko, who had 10 points and eight rebounds. She also had a team-high four turnovers, but Jensen was OK with all she provided.
“She maybe had a couple (shots) she forced, but boy, she came out in that third quarter with a lot of intensity, and I thought she really ran our offense really well,” Jensen said. “And she almost has a double-double in about, what, 23 minutes? So I think she’s really coming.”
The rest of the season, the difficult schedule that is here before the first week is even over, is really coming, a timetable that can’t wait.
“I’m a competitor, I would love it to look better,” Jensen said. “But what I liked about our team when I went to the locker room, they won by 28, but they know they didn’t play well at all, and I think that’s a really good sign of a team that’s hungry and knows that we performed subpar in that offense.
“Sometimes what captures the attention is when it didn’t look so good. Like tonight.”
Photo: Iowa’s Ava Heiden (5) and Taylor Stremlow celebrate during Monday’s season-opening win over Towson. (Brian Ray/hawkeyesports.com)
