Women's Basketball Media Day Notebook

Tickets for No. 4 Iowa Selling at Crisp Pace

IOWA CITY, Iowa - It’s a hot ticket.

Approximately 5,200 season tickets have been sold for the Iowa women’s basketball team this season, a new program record.

That’s coming off a season in which the Hawkeyes went 24-8, shared the Big Ten regular-season title, won the conference tournament, sold out the final three games at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, and, oh, by the way, have five starters returning from that team.

It’s easy, senior Kate Martin said, to enjoy the attention.

“Fifteen thousand fans in here, that’s amazing,” Martin said at Thursday’s media day. “You’ve just got to enjoy it, and use the fans to your advantage. Give them what they want.”

Iowa ranked third in NCAA Division I in attendance last season, averaging 8.224 fans. The February 27 regular-season finale against Michigan at Carver-Hawkeye drew 15,056 fans, the second-most for a regular-season game nationally last season. The two NCAA tournament games against Illinois State and Creighton drew 14,382 — the arena had less seating available — which were the highest attended tournament games outside of the Final Four in Minneapolis.

That’s what drew me here, obviously,” said senior guard Gabbie Marshall, who grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. “I’m seven hours from home. I came here for one game, and saw the fans they got.

“It’s an awesome feeling when you run out of that tunnel and there’s a sold-out crowd. There’s no better feeling than that.”

“You just look around, see black and gold everywhere,” Martin said. “Chills, immediately. It was just an amazing feeling to have that support for women’s basketball.

“You get 15,000 people to be on one team, that’s pretty amazing.”

“The nation is paying attention,” coach Lisa Bluder said. “Eighteen of our 29 games this year are going to be on national television. We've doubled our season ticket sales from last year, and after three straight Carver-Hawkeye Arena sellouts, our team is ready to play and get back into Carver.”

The Hawkeyes were ranked No. 4 in the Associated Press preseason poll released Tuesday, the program’s highest ranking since 1994.

“This is what you’ve worked for,” All-American guard Caitlin Clark said. “This is what you’ve dreamed of. The basketball world is looking to Iowa City, and that’s what you want. I grew up in this state. This is what I’ve dreamed of. You know, embrace that.”

MOVING ON: Iowa’s season last year ended with a second-round loss to Creighton.

That game, Bluder said, should provide motivation, but, she said, it wasn’t the only thing to remember from last season.

“We lost to a really good team that advanced to the Elite Eight,” Bluder said. “But it has definitely been a very good driving motivator for our team. We talk about it a lot. We talk about it almost daily. We're bringing up examples from that game or that we fell short, because I think if you don't do that, you're not using an opportunity to really motivate your athletes and kind of fuel the fire a little bit for them.

Now, we don't want to focus on it so much that it's all that they see. We certainly want to celebrate the Big Ten championship and the Big Ten Tournament and those type of things, as well, because if you focus just on a loss, that's a little depressing, right, and who wants to come to practice then. We really try to use it more as a fuel for fire than anything else.”

The Hawkeyes, though, won’t have their annual closed scrimmage against the Bluejays. They’ll face DePaul instead.

“Do I need to explain that?” Bluder said, laughing. “A little bad taste in our mouth, obviously. You know something, DePaul is a great team. They were ranked No. 1 in the country in points per game, they play in the Big East. I called (Creighton coach) Jim (Flanery) and explained the situation. He was great with it. He totally understood. We've been doing that a lot of years, and it was just time for something new and especially after that situation last year.”

LOSING FEUERBACH: The Hawkeyes will be without guard Kylie Feuerbach, who is out for the season after suffering an offseason knee injury.

Feuerbach played in every game last season, averaging 14.6 minutes. She averaged 3.4 points per game.

“She played a lot for us and she was really oftentimes the first perimeter substitution off the bench,” Bluder said. “That was a loss for us, and she was looking so good this summer. She was playing very well. She put a lot of time into the gym this summer.

“My heart just aches for her more than anything else. Any time that you lose a player to ACL, it's just … it takes away a lot of their identity, a lot of their joy of being here at Iowa, and I really feel bad about that for her.”

The Hawkeyes will get back center Sharon Goodman and forward Shateah Wetering, who missed last season with knee injuries.