Hawkeyes fall to South Carolina in the national title game
On Sunday afternoon, thousands of fans donning black-and-gold descended on Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, with the hope that their Hawkeyes would raise the national championship trophy at the end of the night. For a while, Caitlin Clark and Co. gave the Gamecocks all that the could handle, but the steamroller that is South Carolina Women’s Basketball was too much to stop.
Despite trailing by as little as five points with under five minutes left to play, the Hawkeyes were never able to get the extra stop or the extra basket needed to put pressure on Dawn Staley’s squad. The Gamecocks went on a 7-0 run to end the game and earned the program’s third national title.
“I’m proud of my team,” said Coach Lisa Bluder. “Finishing national runner-up two years in a row is an amazing feat. Nobody thought we were going to be here at the beginning of the year, so that makes it pretty special.”
Much like the last season, when the Hawkeyes knocked off South Carolina in the national semifinal, they entered the game believing they had a chance to win, even if others didn’t give them a shot. That belief showed through in the opening ten minutes, with Iowa throwing a huge haymker to start off the highly-anticipated game.
Kate Martin scored the first five points of the game, while Caitlin Clark hit a second-chance three-pointer to give the Hawkeyes a stunning 10-0 lead. Later, in the closing seconds of the first, Caitlin hit a three-pointer in front of the SC bench to make it 27-20 Iowa heading into the second quarter. Her 18 first quarter points were the most in a single quarter in championship game history. It was the type of start the Hawkeyes needed if they were going to pull off the upset for a second time.
The Gamecocks won the game with their performance in the second and third quarter. Defensively, they were able to slow down the fire in the Hawkeyes attack, holding them to 32 points on 12 of 35 shooting (34.3%) over the middle two quarters.
On the other end of the floor, South Carolina was a force than cannot be kept down for 40 minutes. They went on a 5-0 run to end the first half and a 6-0 run to begin the second half. All of the sudden, all of Iowa’s work to build an early lead was erased and the Gamecocks led 55-46.
“We knew they were going to go on runs. Their runs are kind of daggers, especially when they keep making pull-up jump shots. That’s what we are going to give up. Sometimes you live with that and you’re going to live with them out-rebounding you. There’s only so much you can do for someone who’s 6’7,” said Caitlin Clark.
Back-to-back threes from Tessa Johnson and Bree Hall extended the SC lead to 65-55, while Johnson hit another late in the third to make it 68-57. A basket from Syd Affolter cut the deficit to nine points, but the Hawkeyes had their work cut out for them in the fourth quarter.
“We knew they were going to go on runs. By no means, when we started off as hot as we did, did we think we’d be able to hold that lead,” said Caitlin. “There’s some crazy statistics where South Carolina just outscores everybody in the second half by a ton of points every single game.”
Despite those crazy statistics, the Hawkeyes fought valiantly to get back into the game. Back-to-back three-pointers from Caitlin Clark and Gabbie Marshall capped off a 9-2 run to cut the lead to 76-70. Moments later, a Syd Affolter basket, plus the foul made it 80-75. An ominous looking 14-point deficit was suddenly just five.
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“I’m just proud of our resiliency. We go into the fourth quarter, I think we cut it to five and we just weren’t able to come up with a few stops and a few baskets,” said Clark. “That speaks to our team. That’s the story it’s been all year long. My whole entire career, we never give up. We just keep fighting.”
Down the stretch, South Carolina made their shots and Iowa just ran out of gas. They missed their last five shots of the game, while the Gamecocks went on a 7-0 run to close things out. In the end, the task was just too much for the Hawkeyes, who watched their opponent celebrate in the confetti for the second consecutive year.
Iowa was just outmatched on the boards. SC outrebounded Iowa 51-29, including 18-7 on the offensive glass. That led to a 30-16 advantage in second chance points for the Gamecocks. Kamila Cardoso had a game-high 17 rebounds, while Chloe Kitts piled on ten rebounds of her own. On top of that, the points off three-point shooting, which had to be heavily in favor of Iowa, was just 27-24 Hawkeyes.
“Honestly, I just hope we’ve brought a lot of people joy and we’ve brought a lot of people together,” said Kate Martin. “I hear all the time about how many friends people have made in the stands just watching our games. We sold out every single home game this year at Carver…more than anything, our legacy is what we’ve brought to the state of Iowa, I think, and all the joy and the fun.”
In her final game as a Hawkeye, Caitlin Clark put up 30 points, eight rebounds and five assists. Kate Martin capped off an excellent sixth-year season with 16 points and five rebounds. Returning next season, Syd Affolter and Hannah Stuelke combined for 23 points and six rebounds.
“I think this group has gone about it in the right way in every single thing that we’ve done in every phase of our life. I think that’s what you can be the most proud of,” said Caitlin. “We truly have each other’s back. Maybe we weren’t always the most skilled, maybe we weren’t always the tallest, maybe we weren’t always the fastest, but we just believed. We knew we could be in these moments. We trusted one another.”
Iowa is one of just five teams to advance to back-to-back national title games since 2000 and they set the program wins record for the second straight season. Their 65 wins over the last two years are by far the most in school history.
