How Iowa Has Figured Itself Out After Caitlin Clark
The No. 10-ranked Iowa Hawkeyes women's basketball team defeated the No.15-ranked University of Maryland Terrapins in overtime by a score of 85-78 on January 22. This improved the Hawkeyes' record to 17-2 on the season.
Iowa is absolutely humming right now. The team feels like a well-oiled machine on offense and a cohesive unit on defense. In fact, this is the best the Hawkeyes have looked since the 2023-24 NCAA postseason, when Caitlin Clark was still on the roster, and Lisa Bluder was still Iowa's head coach.
There was always going to be a transitional period after losing one of the greatest college basketball players of all time and a head coach who had been running the Hawkeyes' program for for 2024 seasons. And quite frankly, the fact that the Hawkeyes went 23-11 in the 2024-25 season and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament is a testament to the Hawkeyes' new head coach, Jan Jensen.
Iowa Is Defining Itself in a Post Caitlin Clark Era
Before Jansen could turn the Hawkeyes' program back into a national championship contender, she had to assert Iowa as her own program. This was especially difficult because she had been Bluder's right-hand woman for so long; the 2024-25 season still felt like an extension of a Bluder-led team.
And while Iowa hasn't made any massive changes between Jansen's first and second seasons, there have been some tweaks that have paid off massively in terms of consistency and efficiency on the court.
The question now is how the Hawkeyes can truly compete for a national championship without Clark. While they're certainly a contender, Iowa would be a sizable underdog against national powerhouses like UConn or South Carolina if the NCAA tournament started tomorrow. Yet, anything can happen in March, and the Hawkeyes have shown enough grit and tenacity to be a tough out against anyone.
It remains to be seen whether the Hawkeyes can compete for a national championship this season. But the steps forward they've taken this year — both on the court and in terms of separating itself from the Caitlin Clark era while still understanding how vital that was to the program's growth — put them in a position to become a national powerhouse for years to come, even if a generational talent like Clark doesn't come around ever again.
Carver-Hawkeye Arena is still the house that Caitlin Clark built. But the current regime and roster are making renovations, and the end product might be better than it ever was before.
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Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.
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