Lisa Bluder on the win over Colorado

The Iowa Hawkeyes survived and advanced on Saturday afternoon, beating Colorado in the Sweet 16 for the second straight year. Lisa Bluder discusses the win and gives her early thoughts on the match-up with LSU on Monday night.

LISA BLUDER: I’m just really proud of the way that we played today. I thought we played really good team basketball. We got everybody involved. We had five people in double figures. Did a great job on the boards. They only got four offensive rebounds in the whole second half.

I’m really proud of my group. Caitlin comes out and has 15 assists, only two turnovers. I thought there’s so many people that played well in this game. Syd Affolter has the highest plus/minus of anybody, Gabbie Marshall knocks down threes, Kate Martin her leadership out there was unbelievable. Hannah Stuelke didn’t let their center have a single O-board. That’s hard to do. That’s really hard to do.

So I’m proud of my group.

Q. Obviously the offense is pretty much exactly where you’d want it to be. You held Colorado to 37 percent shooting, below 30 from three, and a lot of that came late, as well. What is the state of your defense, and what were you guys doing defensively so effectively tonight?

LISA BLUDER: I thought our three-point defense was really good. We didn’t want to let them get on a roll in the three-pointers.

I know they’ve still got 16 offensive rebounds. Better than the 21 we gave up last year, but they only got four in the second half. So we did a better job boxing out in the second half.

I think Gabbie is such a good defensive player, and people don’t give her enough credit for that. There are games she’ll not score a single point for us and just come up with key play after key play.

I thought we were physical. I thought we did a really good job communicating on defense tonight.

Q. The start you guys had, it seemed you threw the first punch and they didn’t recover from that to make it competitive. How good was it to get off to a good start against Colorado?

LISA BLUDER: I thought it was great. It didn’t feel like — when you said it wasn’t competitive, it felt to me like it was. But I thought we came out in the third quarter and really had that punch to begin the third quarter. We had three straight stops that turned into pushes for us. I think we set the tone early in both of the halves. I think it was really important.

Q. I know you probably aren’t caught up in this, you’re looking at the game Iowa versus LSU, but this is the game everybody has wanted since last April. How big of a deal is it for women’s basketball and how fun is it to be a part of something that’s really kind of changed the narrative of the game?

LISA BLUDER: Yeah, I think everybody is pretty excited for it. 12 million people tuned in last year to see this game. Might be the same this time. Who knows.

I know that these are two really good basketball teams, and it’s almost unfortunate they’re meeting this early. But everybody that’s left now is really good. LSU is certainly that.

Again, I haven’t looked at our scout yet. I haven’t gotten ready for that. But I just know it’s going to be highly emotional and highly competitive.

Q. I know you all are saying one game at a time, you don’t want to live in the past. As a former athletic though, I can imagine competitiveness is what it is. With that said, your last matchup with LSU last year was a lot of — there was a lot of things happening on the court and off the court, meaning a lot of press, a lot of social media attention. There’s energy behind that, and I can already feel the energy and the momentum building up even with the fanfare here today. How do you temper that with your team? How do you keep them focused as well as keep them competitive and really ready and excited to possibly avenge what happened last year?

LISA BLUDER: Yeah, we got run out of the gym last year. It was pretty bad.

But honestly, we try to keep looking straight ahead and not listen to the outside noise. I think my team has done a good job of staying off social media, trying not to get caught up in that.

I think when you get caught up in all that, it takes your energy off the focus that you need at hand, and that is to prepare for a really good LSU team.

Nothing else matters. Nothing matters that happened last year. Nothing matters except for being ready to play this really good LSU team.

I just don’t think my players are going to get caught up in listening to outside voices. They haven’t all year. They’ve handled it all year. I think that they’ll continue to do so.

Q. When you’re coming into a new arena and a new community this week and you see the fans that are here today. I know a lot of them were the home faithful, but does it ever catch you by surprise to see how many people come out to watch and experience this team?

LISA BLUDER: Do you mean Hawkeye fans specifically or anybody?

Q. Anybody.

LISA BLUDER: Quite honestly, everywhere we go, the average attendance increases a lot because people want to see Caitlin Clark play. So right away, she’s a magnet for fans. Wherever we go, it is the highest crowd that they have all year long, so it doesn’t surprise me at all.

What does surprise me is as many Hawk fans that are here because what I had heard before this was announced that it was already sold out and we weren’t going to get many tickets and all that. So to see so much black and gold here, they must have worked really hard to get their tickets. Again, Hawk fans are absolutely incredible.

Q. Caitlin got her second personal with six minutes left in the second quarter. You don’t take her out. I’ve seen players taken out automatically for that time after time after time. Why didn’t you, and obviously it was a good thing you didn’t?

LISA BLUDER: I thought the two fouls she got we kind of touch fouls. They were just kind of like, eh, that could have been called, maybe not called.

To me, she’s so smart. I just talked to her a little bit, just said, hey, be careful, you’ve got two. We put her out at the end, we were taking her out for defensive possessions. But she is one smart basketball player, and I really trust her.

We also went to some zone to try to protect a little bit, too.

Q. You haven’t done your scout on LSU yet, obviously, but given that you have such a tight turnaround to get there and it’s such a big game, what goes into having such a short turnaround and coming up with hopefully the kind of game plan that gets you into the Final Four?

LISA BLUDER: Well, you don’t wait until tonight to do it. Honestly, we’ve been working on — I have different coaches assigned to different teams and I have somebody assigned to LSU. When I go back to the hotel, they’ll have a scout ready for me to look at, and then we’ll all sit down as a staff and try to figure out a game plan.

But you don’t wait until now. You’ve got to do your homework ahead of time. Believe me, there was a lot of wasted paper and hours on UCLA and some other people, but that’s the way it is this time of year. You have to be ready for everybody.