IOWA CITY – The Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team closed out the regular season with a victory over Wisconsin, and former Mason City Mohawk Mackenzie Meyer delivered points, assists and steals to help seal the win.
Meyer scored 5 points and chipped in 4 assists and 2 steals in 34 minutes of game action to help Iowa (17-12, 8-8) defeat Wisconsin (8-21, 3-13), 71-60.
Two Hawkeyes scored in double figures. They include: Megan Gustafon (22) and Ally Disterhoft (19). Disterhoft netted 19 points to move her career total to 2,022. She is 37 points away from tying Iowa’s all-time career scoring record of 2,059 (Cindy Haugejorde (1976-80). Gustafson registered her 15th double-double of the season with 22 points and 14 rebounds.
Freshman Kathleen Doyle registered six steals to break Iowa’s program record for steals in a freshman season (57, Johanna Solverson, 02-03). Doyle leads the team with 62 steals this season.
University of Iowa Basketball Media Conference
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Lisa Bluder
Women’s Basketball
Iowa – 71, Wisconsin – 60
LISA BLUDER: Well, a great way to end our regular season here with a nice crowd today, and an opportunity to recognize our three seniors. They all have done such a great job for us the last four years, so it’s nice that they went out on a win on their home court, playing well. That was good.
Obviously our fourth quarter was very good. Third quarter was a little shaky. Too many turnovers in that situation, and we got out-rebounded quite badly in the second half.
But, you know, we did a lot of nice things in that fourth quarter, and just really fitting to see Lex hit those two threes. That’s just like one of those, again, storybook type of things; your senior comes in, hits a couple of threes in that fourth quarter and really gives us great life.
Happy for her, and just now moving on to the Big Ten Tournament.
Q. What do you think happened there in the third quarter?
LISA BLUDER: Yeah, we had seven turnovers in 10 minutes of play, and so when you’re just not giving yourself an opportunity to score, it’s tough. And then we weren’t boxing out, either, so I think it was a combination of giving up too many offensive rebounds and just not valuing the ball.
What’s frustrating is we were in the bonus like at the eight-minute or seven-minute mark, and we just didn’t take advantage of it. Now they were in a zone, and it’s a little bit harder in that situation, but not impossible by any means. I don’t think we really used that to our advantage, although I do think we got there maybe five times in the third quarter. I can’t remember for sure.
Q. Badgers came in averaging something like 18 personal fouls a game. Was that maybe part of your game plan that you guys thought you might be able to get to and take advantage of?
LISA BLUDER: You know, I think it’s really hard to plan on getting fouls. I think it’s really hard because you just never know what officials are going to be calling, if they sat in a zone a lot of time. And again, we’re still going to try to draw fouls against the zone, but it really wasn’t a part of our big game plan that we were just going to try to draw fouls on them. We try to draw fouls on every opponent by getting the ball inside or driving or hitting cutters. That really didn’t change, I guess, in this game other than what we always do.
Q. Hannah Stewart had some big minutes there; I think it was the second quarter she had like two or three straight trips down where she had buckets?
LISA BLUDER: Yeah, we talked about that in the locker room afterwards, that Hannah’s seven minutes were really big. She really used her time well in there. She was very efficient, did a good job on the glass. She ran transition, so that was really nice to see. Chase got four offensive rebounds, too, tonight. That was also good to see.
Q. Their No. 40 was a forward guarding Ally a lot of the time, but she made all her points inside. What were you trying to do with her or what can you do with her?
LISA BLUDER: Yeah, that’s a little bit of a mismatch because she’s a guard playing the post position, and so that’s always, I think, harder for our post players to be able to contain somebody like that. But a lot of them were off the offensive glass. A lot of them — and again, wasn’t just Megan guarding her because we were in a zone a lot of times, too, and so then that falls on everybody’s responsibility, not just one person’s responsibility. So those mismatches can be hard at times, but I thought, when they’re in player, we had a mismatch on her because Ally, you saw her just take her it to the hole, too.
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The University of Iowa women’s basketball team finished the conference slate with an 8-8 record and is the No. 8 seed in the 2017 Big Ten Conference Tournament. The tournament is set for March 1-5 at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
The Hawkeyes open tournament play against ninth-seeded Northwestern (19-10; 8-8) on Thursday at 11 a.m. (CT). The game will be broadcast live on the Big Ten Network. The winner will advance to meet top-seeded Ohio State on Friday at 11 a.m.
Iowa defeated Northwestern in the lone meeting between the two teams on Feb. 16 in Iowa City, Iowa. The Hawkeyes defeated the Wildcats, 78-59. Eight Hawkeyes scored five or more points in the contest, including a team-high 17 by sophomore Megan Gustafson. Six Hawkeyes registered five or more rebounds, and junior Chase Coley finished one point shy of her seventh career double-double (9 points, 11 rebounds).
Iowa is 22-20 all-time in the Big Ten Tournament. The Hawkeyes have claimed two tournament titles (1997, 2001) and made four championship game appearances.
