Penn State women’s basketball (16-7, 7-5 Big Ten) was defeated by No. 2 Iowa (22-2, 11-1 Big Ten) 111-93 on Thursday night.

The Lady Lions had the lead after the first quarter, but Iowa took over in the second quarter and never looked back. The Hawkeyes were unstoppable on the offensive end as Caitlin Clark and Hannah Stuelke combined for 74 points. As for Penn State, Ashley Owusu led the team in scoring with 16 points.

How It Happened

After winning the tipoff, the Lady Lions got the scoring started when Owusu scored the first bucket on a second-chance layup. Iowa scored its first bucket right away when Clark scored a three-pointer off an assist by Molly Davis.

After Iowa’s Stuelke scored to make it a three-point lead for the Hawkeyes, the Lady Lions got their first three-pointer of the game when Chanaya Pinto scored off an assist from Shay Ciezki to tie the game. The Hawkeyes responded by scoring back-to-back layups to make the score 9-5. Pinto scored a layup for the Lady Lions before she committed a shooting foul on Iowa’s Kate Martin. She went on to make both free throws to restore Iowa’s four-point lead.

After Jayla Oden scored off a fast break that led to a media timeout, the Lady Lions took the lead by one when she rifled a pass to Ali Brigham where she banked in a three-pointer. The Hawkeyes responded with back-to-back layups to restore their lead. This momentum ended when the Lady Lions went on a 5-0 run from buckets from Alli Campbell and Leilani Kapinus to retake the lead.

Iowa picked up the tempo and went on a 7-0 run to manufacture a 22-17 lead with about a minute left in the first quarter. This run ended when Ciezki capitalized on a three-pointer off an assist by Campbell. Ciezki’s momentum kept going when she scored another three-pointer and the quarter ended with Kapinus capitalizing on an Iowa turnover to give the Lady Lions a two-point lead heading into the second quarter.

TO END Q1 #LionMentality pic.twitter.com/vctFYn1LlN

— Penn State Women's Basketball (@PennStateWBB) February 9, 2024

The second quarter began with Penn State getting the first score of the quarter to increase its lead to four. However, Clark responded for Iowa with a three-pointer, which began a 7-0 run for the Hawkeyes and gave them a five-point lead. Iowa’s momentum ended when Kapinus found an open Grace Hall and banked in a three to cut Iowa’s lead to three. After a three-pointer by Clark and a made layup by AJ Ediger, the Lady Lions suffered a huge blow when Ciezki left the game with an injury.

Despite the injury, the Lady Lions showed their resilience by going on an 8-2 run to cut the Hawkeyes’ lead to one. After the media timeout, Clark began to take the game over for Iowa as she went on to score seven straight points for the Hawkeyes. This streak began when she scored two free throws off a foul by Moriah Murray. She became very aggressive on offense and got rewarded when Owusu committed a foul after she scored a layup and the free throw.

The Lady Lions trimmed the lead to three, but the Lady Lions kept struggling to defend Clark as she hit from deep to increase the lead for Iowa to six. This bucket was the beginning of a 9-0 run for Iowa as it increased its lead to double digits with less than a minute to go. The Lady Lions stopped the bleeding when Hall found an open Marisa behind the arc and hit from deep to trim Iowa’s lead to single digits. Just before the quarter ended, Campbell committed a shooting foul on Clark with two seconds left and she knocked down both free throws as Penn State went into halftime trailing by 11.

The Hawkeyes came out of the locker room very aggressive as Stuelke would score five straight points to increase Iowa’s lead to 16. The Lady Lions would cool Iowa’s momentum when Hall scored a layup and Owusu knocked down a free throw to trim the lead to 13. However, Stuelke’s scoring streak would continue as she scored four more straight points.

After Makenna scored consecutive free throws, Iowa kept its foot on the gas when it scored back-to-back layups to increase the lead to 19 and forced the Lady Lions to take a timeout. Coming out of the timeout, both teams struggled to score a basket for more than a minute. This cold streak ended when Murray found an open Pinto in the paint and scored the layup which led to a media timeout.

After the media timeout, Iowa would just not let the Lady Lions get back in the game as it scored four free throws in a row to increase its lead to 21. The Lady Lions struggled to get anything going on offense as they went more than two minutes without a basket, and this ended when Kapinus made an open layup.

A short Penn State run ended when Iowa scored a second-chance layup off a missed free throw. The Lady Lions went on a fast break and converted on a three-pointer by Marisa to trim the lead to 13. However, just before the quarter ended, Iowa crushed the momentum for the Lady Lions when Sydney Affolter knocked down a buzzer-beater three to end the third quarter.

The fourth quarter began with Iowa increasing its lead to 18 off a mid-range jumper by Martin. After Murray banked in a three-pointer to decrease Iowa’s lead to 15, both teams went back-and-forth for a minute as both teams capitalized on their scoring opportunities and the defense finally got a stop when Clark committed an out-of-bounds turnover, and the offensive possession that came from it led to a made jumper in the paint by Owusu which led Iowa to take a timeout.

Out of the timeout, Stuelke kept causing damage on the Lady Lions’ defense as she went on to score six straight points despite every attempt from the Lady Lions to decrease the deficit to single digits. After a made free throw from Stuelke increased the Iowa lead to 14, the Lady Lions forced Iowa to commit consecutive shooting fouls and Marisa and Kapinus would convert the free throws to cut the deficit to 10.

Opportunity was given to the Lady Lions to cut the deficit to single digits, but the Lady Lions struggled to get a rebound off the misses from Clark and this led to Kapinus committing a foul on Affolter. She went on to convert both free throws and Iowa would not look back after this.

Iowa’s scoring rampage would not stop as it reached the 100-point mark when Gabbie Marshall knocked down a three-pointer to increase the lead to 17 with less than 3 minutes to go and put the game out of reach for the Lady Lions.

The fourth quarter and game came to an end as the Hawkeyes emerged victorious 111-93.

Takeaways

• Penn State’s defense was a huge story in this game as it struggled to stop Iowa’s offense. The Lady Lions let Iowa score more than 100 points and got dominated in the paint as Iowa scored 56 points in the paint.
• Ciezki’s injury had a major impact on the Lady Lions. Before she got hurt, the team was going back and forth with Iowa but after the injury, the Lady Lions struggled on offense. They averaged 35% in field goal attempts and 32% from the three-point line in this game.
• Clark, last year’s Wooden Award winner, was not the star of the game. Instead, it was her teammate, Hannah Stuelke. She scored 47 points as she went 17-20 on field goal attempts and 13-21 on free throws. As for Clark, she had a double-double with 27 points and 15 assists.

What’s Next?

The Lady Lions will try to rebound from consecutive defeats when they head to Madison, Wisconsin, to take on Wisconsin at 3 p.m. on Sunday, February 11. Folks can stream the game on BTN+.