Penn State women’s basketball won six games in a row during its most successful season of the Carolyn Kieger era before its streak was snapped by Michigan this past Saturday. The team fell apart after trailing by just four points at halftime, closed a once-18-point deficit, but ultimately fell 80-75 in the end.

During a 17-2 Michigan run that started in the closing minutes of the second quarter, the Lady Lions struggled to stop the Wolverines on both ends, giving up easy buckets and turning the ball over 17 times.

Now, with Thursday’s matchup against Caitlin Clark and No. 2 Iowa approaching, Kieger said changes are needed, and it’s up to her and the coaching staff to ensure the team is ready for the test.

“I was disappointed as a coach tonight in our effort. That’s the first time I’ve seen our team not battle as hard as we wanted them to on the defensive end,” Kieger said after the loss to Michigan. “Obviously, you’re never going to play a perfect game, but we want 40 minutes of perfect effort, and I don’t think that happened tonight. We’ll go back and we’ll fix that.”

The lack of defensive effort allowed the Wolverines to shoot 47% from three-point range, score 20 fast break points, and record 19 assists on 29 made field goals. However, Kieger saw more issues on the other side of the ball that led to Penn State scoring only 75 points despite averaging almost 87 per game.

“It was very stagnant, and when that happens, you got to have more movement, screening actions, more fluidity with the ball swinging left to right,” she said. “We’ll adjust and I know our guards will be ready to fix that. I think you’ll see a different offense against Iowa.”

These adjustments won’t come easy as the Hawkeyes are holding their opponents to just 68.5 points per game and are led by reigning National Player of the Year Caitlin Clark, who is averaging 32.4 points, 7.9 assists, seven rebounds, and 1.7 steals per game and is only 66 points away from becoming the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer. So, what has to change for Penn State to pull off the upset?

The guards will be a deciding factor in the matchup, and they struggled to take care of the ball in their previous game, registering 17 turnovers as a team.

Ashley Owusu said the team’s uncharacteristic outing was defined by trouble “being able to take care of the ball in certain situations” and was sped up and forced out of its gameplan by Michigan’s defense.

Aside from the turnovers, the team also struggled from beyond the arc, tallying five threes on 16 attempts, which Kieger believes wasn’t enough.

“The way we’re shooting it, we need to generate more looks,” Kieger said. “We were getting no penetrate and pitches or baseline drift passes to our shooters. That was just out of character for our offense this year.”

Kieger and the rest of the team are expecting these developments to happen over the course of the week before traveling to Carver-Hawkeye Arena and squaring off with Iowa the Big Ten Network at 9 p.m. on Thursday, February 8.

“We just need to lock in mentally in practice and get back to playing how we used to play,” Leilani Kapinus said.