Leistikow: Expectations soar for Iowa women's basketball, a top-five preseason team

MINNEAPOLIS − Prominent national outlets, including ESPN, have tabbed Iowa as a top-five team for the upcoming women’s basketball season. While Lisa Bluder’s Hawkeyes have been a successful program for two decades, expectations during her coaching tenure have never been like this.

How has the coach with 800-plus career wins told her team to deal with such pressure? By quoting a tennis legend.

“I had the opportunity to meet Billie Jean King one time. She told me, ‘Lisa, pressure is a privilege.’ (It’s) a quote she's used often,” Bluder said Tuesday from the Target Center, where the Big Ten women’s tournament will be held in five months. “She wrote it on a piece of paper, signed it (and) it's in our locker room. I want our team to remember that pressure is a privilege. Enjoy it.”

While the preseason top-five feels new, at least this century, it’s been earned. Iowa has an otherworldly star in Caitlin Clark and every starter back from a team that was a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Last year, for the first time in school history, the Hawkeyes won a regular-season (shared) and tournament title in the Big Ten.

“We deserve that ranking,” said Clark, who arguably had the most attention of any of the 33 players on hand Tuesday for the first of two days at Big Ten Media Days. “But it’s a long season. There’s high, there’s lows.”

Iowa was picked first in the league, followed by Ohio State, Indiana, Maryland and Michigan – the same top five as last year in a hotly contested race to the finish. Many coaches said that the Big Ten is as strong as it’s ever been, a year after getting four teams to the NCAA Sweet 16. And though Iowa wasn’t one of them after a stunning second-round exit vs. Creighton, the team that was playing at a high level throughout February and early March should be even deeper this time around.

“They're fantastic. Well-coached,” Indiana coach Teri Moren said of Iowa. “I think the rest of us will be chasing after that.”

Being picked first in the Big Ten is almost a regularity for Maryland, but not this year. Iowa native Brenda Frese has nine new players and doesn’t exactly know what to expect from a young team.

But Frese knows what it’s like to be coaching the team with the target on its back, particularly during the conference schedule. Her words Tuesday can serve as a reminder that Iowa’s season will feel different.

“It’s definitely a different element. It’s easier to get to the top, harder to stay on top,” Frese said. “Every single game, whether you’re playing the second-place team in the conference or the last-place team, you will get that team’s best shot.

“That is something that your team has to really wrap your arms around. … But I think it also makes you better, that you’re going to get everyone’s (best) game.”

Bluder itemized the veteran nucleus: Clark, the first player in NCAA history to lead the nation in points and assists in the same season; center Monika Czinano, who has averaged 20.2 points over the past two seasons and shot 67% from the field over the last three; “lethal” 3-point shooter Gabbie Marshall; a versatile power forward in McKenna Warnock; and the “glue” of the team in Kate Martin.

If any team can handle pressure, it’s a veteran group that genuinely likes one another and cheers for one another's successes.

“We’re definitely the hunted this year, but we’re going to take it one day at a time, one game at a time like we always do,” Martin said. “… We’re going to work as hard as we ever did, even when we were the hunters.”

Hawkeye men and women have each other's backs

One of the fun elements of this year’s Big Ten Media Days is that the men and women are here at the same venue, conducting interviews one after another. Being together was nothing new for the Iowa women and men, who are both the reigning conference-tournament champions.

It's not uncommon to see the women’s players show up in large numbers for men’s games; and the men for the women. During last year’s sold-out Iowa-Michigan women’s game that decided the Big Ten regular-season championship, men’s players and coach Fran McCaffery found lower-bowl seats and cheered loudly.

“A lot of teams may act like they’re super-close off the court, but for us it’s real,” men’s forward Patrick McCaffery said. Tuesday. “We hang out off the court. We’re super close. We talk all the time. It’s real here. It’s something we’re grateful for.”

Some of the women’s players said the camaraderie grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the only fans allowed to attend games were friends and family … and the men’s basketball team. In mostly-empty Carver-Hawkeye Arena, the basketball players showed up (and shouted) for one another.

“Our men’s team supports the women’s team like no other. And they know the game really well, they know the players, they know the coaches,” Clark said. “In COVID, I think Patrick McCaffery was probably the loudest player in the gym.”

Added Martin with a laugh: “He loves yelling at the refs for us.”

For Connor McCaffery, watching the Iowa women goes back even further. His best friend at Iowa City West was Nate Disterhoft, whose sister Ally is a program legend and the school’s No. 2 leading scorer.

“I’ve been watching coach Bluder as long as I’ve been watching Iowa men’s basketball, too. I love supporting them. We’re all close,” Connor said. “ … We hang out off the court. They come to our games, and we go to their games.”

While Clark gets most of the attention, Czinano's time here has been special

Playing in Clark's shadow at times, Czinano has amassed 1,763 career points, one ahead of Jennie Lillis for seventh in Iowa history. If she’s healthy and maintains her average of 20.2 points over the past two seasons, she would have no problem moving past Disterhoft (2,102 points) as the program’s No. 2 all-time scorer, behind only Megan Gustafson’s 2,804. Of course, Clark (1,662 in just two seasons) may be neck and neck with her by season’s end.

Also ahead of Clark and Czinano (for now) in the all-time pecking order: Cindy Haugejorde (2,059 points), Lindsey Meder (1,906), Jaime Printy (1,841) and Michelle Edwards (1,821). So, yeah, it’s possible Iowa will have the Nos. 2 and 3 scorers in school history on the active roster by late February.

That’s a long way of saying Czinano is a great player, and she was a popular interview subject as well in Minneapolis. Her hometown of Watertown is just 35 minutes to the west. This is the first time the Big Ten tournament will be contested in Minnesota, and it will be a fitting moment for Czinano, who needed only three days to mull her decision to use her free "COVID year" and return to Iowa for a fifth and final season.

“It would have been a lot different (returning) to a completely rebuilding year. I think knowing Kate was going to be here and what we had left, it would feel weird if I wasn’t there,” Czinano said. “I know what we’re capable of, and especially with how our season ended last year, I was so grateful that I had another year, that it wasn’t going to be my last taste of Iowa women’s basketball.”

Hawkeyes columnist Chad Leistikow has covered sports for 28 years with The Des Moines Register, USA TODAY and Iowa City Press-Citizen. Follow @ChadLeistikow on Twitter.