By Michael McCurdy
A lot was on the line in Bloomington, Indiana, on Wednesday night as the Hoosiers hosted the Iowa women’s basketball team in what had the potential to be a classic with both teams having similar overall and conference records.
The contest lived up to its hype — it ended in double overtime, with the Hawkeyes on the wrong side of a heartbreaker, 80-77.
Early on, the Hawkeyes jumped out to an 8-3 lead in the first quarter thanks to sophomore Megan Gustafson and senior Ally Disterhoft finishing their shots around the rim. Iowa kept the lead for the rest of the first quarter, holding Indiana in check thanks to re-emergence of freshman Bre Cera from the bench.
The game didn’t change until the third quarter, as the Hawkeyes hit a dry spell on the offensive end. Iowa only tallied 10 points in the quarter, compared with 20 in the first and 19 in the second.
The Hawkeyes committed numerous turnovers in the second half that led to easy fast-break points for the Hoosiers, as well. Iowa ended the contest with 22 turnovers, a glaring stat that makes the challenge of winning on the road even more difficult.
Late in the fourth quarter, it looked as if the Hawkeyes were ready to seal the deal, until Indiana’s Amanda Cahill drilled a 3-pointer with under 1 second left, sending the game into overtime.
In overtime, the Hawkeyes held a 3-point lead again when Indiana again nailed a 3-pointer with time running out. Iowa failed on the other end, the game went into double overtime, and the Hawkeyes ran out of gas.
Iowa shot 21.7 percent from the 3-point line, going 5-of-23 and also went 12-of-19 from the free-throw line. That’s a lot of points left on the board in a game that went down to the final seconds. “We shot too many 3s,” Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder said. “We’re not a great 3-point shooting team right now, and we shot 68 percent from 2-point range. We took 23 3s out of 60 shots — that was way too many 3-point shots. We were not patient and worked for the good shot.”
Disterhoft led the Hawkeyes in scoring with 23 points, going 9-of-16 on field goals; she became the second player in program history to score more than 2,000 points, at 2,003.
“I’m proud of it,” she said. “I have had a lot of great teammates help me get there along the way, that’s for sure. It was not all my doing, I have had a ton of great support. I’m happy about that, but it isn’t on the forefront of my mind right now; we are incredibly bummed about this game.”
There were more accolades on the night from the Hawkeyes; freshman Kathleen Doyle tallied 8 assists, a career high for the young point guard. Senior Alexa Kastanek started, and even though she netted only 7 points on 3-of-10 shooting, she came away with a career-high 7 rebounds.
Iowa will return to the court at 2 p.m. Feb. 26 in Carver-Hawkeye to host Wisconsin for Senior Day.
