IOWA CITY, Iowa – With a sound meter hitting 115 decibels throughout a raucous fourth quarter, the Iowa women’s basketball team rallied from an eight-point deficit to beat No. 18 Iowa State 75-69 Wednesday at sold-out Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

It was No. 21 Iowa’s ninth consecutive home victory over the rival Cyclones dating to 2008 and eighth win in nine meetings overall. By the late fourth quarter, the roar drowned out the public address announcer after buckets.

“Lucy Olson has just been so fun and a joy,” Iowa coach Jan Jensen said of the transfer who joined the Hawkeyes this season. “The very first exhibition game her eyes were like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is amazing.’ And I said, ‘Well, wait until we really hit the game that the fans are not going to give up their tickets for, right? You’re not going to believe what it’s going to be like.’”

Vibes 😎#Hawkeyes pic.twitter.com/kctcMjP4fs

— Iowa Women’s Basketball (@IowaWBB) December 12, 2024

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Iowa State (8-3) led the highly competitive matchup for all but 19 seconds over the first 35 minutes of action. But the Hawkeyes (9-1) took the lead for good on forward Hannah Stuelke’s at 62-61 with 4:17 left. It was part of a 9-0 run in the fourth quarter that gave Iowa a six-point lead that the Cyclones could not overcome.

“It was so loud in there,” Olsen said. “(Sydney Affolter’s) like, ‘We’re not switching the screens.’ I’m like, ‘I can’t hear the screen being called.’ It was really fun. I’ve never been in anything like it.”

Iowa responds

After the Hawkeyes suffered their first loss last week against Tennessee, first-year coach Jensen questioned how her team would respond.

“When you learn how everybody loses, then you can kind of know what you have moving forward,” said Jensen, who took over this season after serving as a longtime Hawkeyes assistant to former coach Lisa Bluder. “After I watched everybody kind of adapt and turn the page pretty quickly with a little bit of a chip, I thought, all right, I think we got something for this rivalry.”

It was Olsen’s first exposure playing in an intense home atmosphere, and the senior transfer from Villanova exceeded the moment. She scored a team-high 25 points and added five assists with no turnovers in nearly 37 minutes. For much of the first half, Olsen kept the Hawkeyes afloat offensively as her teammates struggled.

In the game’s final stretch, Stuelke and Affolter combined with Olsen to score 16 of Iowa’s final 19 points. The exception was a 3-pointer from freshman Aaliyah Guyton with 42 seconds left that sealed the victory.

It was one of the first times that Olsen, Affolter and Stuelke all played alongside one another for significant stretches. Stuelke had offseason knee surgery, while Affolter underwent a knee procedure in October. Then Olsen’s leg was sliced in a freak accident two weeks ago in Cancun, causing her to miss time.

Iowa State looks for answers

Sophomore Audi Crooks was almost unstoppable for Iowa State. She scored 31 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. Her ability to score in multiple ways — not just at the rim — led to Jensen questioning herself on how to defend the Cyclones’ post.

“I didn’t think we were possibly going to shut her totally down,” Jensen said. “It’s hard to double her because no matter where you bring the double, (she has) that beautiful, like kind of Dirk Nowitzki fade. She has an unbelievable ability to step and fade.”

Lucy Olsen’s got game, so does Audi Crooks. The best atmosphere at Carver in several months

Here’s your first half Cy-Hawk highlights pic.twitter.com/Zl7oRqDbHg

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— Blake Hornstein (@BlakeHornTV) December 12, 2024

Three issues hurt the Cyclones throughout the game. Iowa State struggled at the free-throw line, making only 6 of 16 attempts. Foul trouble forced second-leading scorer Addy Brown to the bench, which was critical. Brown played in only 19 minutes and scored 13 points.

Before the game, Iowa State coach Bill Fennelly announced junior guard Kenzie Hare will miss the remainder of the season and will have surgery to repair an ongoing hip injury. Hare started eight games and averaged 8.3 points as the Cyclones’ third-leading scorer.

“It’s hard to have Addy Brown out of the game in foul trouble,” Fennelly said. “That’s a huge loss, and especially with Kenzie situation, we kind of struggled to kind of eat up the minutes.

“I thought our kids played really, really hard. Obviously foul trouble and some limited minutes with some people hurt us, but it was a great game. I’m really proud of the way we competed in a tough environment.”

(Photo: Keith Gillett / IconSportswire)

DES MOINES, Iowa — Former U.S. Rep. Jim Leach, who served 30 years as a politician from eastern Iowa and later headed the National Endowment for the Humanities, died Wednesday. He was 82.

Leach, whose death was confirmed by an Iowa City funeral home, represented Iowa as a moderate Republican until 2006, when he was defeated by Democrat Dave Loebsack in a midterm cycle that gave Democrats control of the U.S. House.

He was chair of the banking and foreign relations committees, and in 2002 he was among six Republicans, who then held the House majority, to vote against a resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. The measure paved the way for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which Leach also opposed.

After leaving Congress, Leach endorsed then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, for president in 2008 over his party’s nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, in part for Obama’s opposition to the 2003 invasion — a decision he said wasn’t easy.

“Part of it is political parties are a distant analog to families and you really hate to step outside a family environment,” Leach told The Associated Press in an interview at the time.

Earlier this year, Leach joined with Loebsack to pen a Jan. 6 op-ed in The Des Moines Register, three years after former President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory.

“This anniversary of the violent insurrection on our nation’s Capitol is a solemn reminder of how fragile the foundations of democracy are when extremists like Donald Trump are willing to undermine millions of voters and encourage a deadly mob all in the name of wielding power,” Leach and Loebsack wrote.

Loebsack told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he even voted for Leach before running against him, despite their difference in political party.

“Jim served our district and state honorably for 30 years. He was a man of principle and integrity and honor,” Loebsack said. “We’re gonna miss him. There’s no question.”

Leach worked as a professor for Princeton, his alma mater, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard before Obama tapped him to lead the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2009. He resigned from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2013 and he joined the University of Iowa faculty.

University Vice President Peter Matthes said in a statement Wednesday that Leach was a “relentless advocate” for Iowa. The university’s statement also said Leach donated his public and private papers to their libraries.

“He lived a life of service that we should all aspire to emulate,” Matthes said.

Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds offered her condolences Wednesday.

“As a member of U.S. Congress for 30 years, Jim dedicated his life to serving his country and the state of Iowa,” Reynolds said on the social platform X.

Leach is survived by his wife, two children and two grandchildren, according to his obituary.

___

This story has been updated to correct that the op-ed by Leach and Loebsack was published three years after the Jan. 6 riot, not one year after.

Evan and Jacob Frost fell in love with wrestling at age six, seven or maybe eight.

They can’t pinpoint the exact age, but agreed that it was love at first scrap.

“(We) enjoyed it,” said Iowa State’s 133-pounder Evan Frost, who saw his twin, Jacob, join the Cyclones’ lineup at 141 at last weekend’s Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational. “Just kind of beating up each other with rules set. I know when we first started it was more just us beating each other up because that’s what we did in the house, me and Jacob.”

 No furniture, the Frosts said, turned into crushed kindling before they delved into the art of structured wrestling as youngsters. Mom didn’t let that happen. But once they took to the sport, the Frost twins did plenty of damage on the mat, as both won three state titles for Holy Cross High School in suburban New Orleans. They then transferred to Dowling Catholic in West Des Moines as high school seniors before eventually committing to head coach Kevin Dresser’s Iowa State program. 

Evan won Iowa’s Class 3A title at 132 pounds as a senior. Jacob earned runner-up honors at 138. 

Now instead of being separated by six pounds, it’s eight, but that’s about as far apart as they get — both on and off the mat.

“If you can tell them apart, then give me the secret because they’re very similar in everything, and they both are very good wrestlers,” said Dresser, whose young and banged-up team took fifth at the Cliff Keen Invitational after winning the title last season.

Evan Frost became the Cyclones’ first 133-pound All-American since 2016 as a redshirt freshman last season while Jacob strained to earn a spot in the lineup. He recently won a wrestle-off with fellow 141-pounder Zach Redding to earn his spot in Las Vegas, where he finished fifth. His sixth-ranked brother reached the finals but fell, 7-3, to #5 Zeth Romney of Cal Poly in the championship bout. Evan took second for the second consecutive time in Vegas — and started the event by overcoming a late 10-1 deficit against Arizona State’s Julian Chlebove and pinning him in 6:59.

“All I could hear was pretty much (Iowa State assistant and two-time NCAA champ for Iowa Brent) Metcalf just saying, ‘Keep going, keep going, keep going,’” said Evan Frost, who, like his brother, is a mechanical engineering major. “He just kept saying, ‘We’ve gotta get one, we’ve gotta get one, we’ve gotta get one.’ Whether he believed that ending was gonna end how it did, I don’t know, but he just kept saying, ‘You’ve got to finish the match and see what happens.’”

That’s how Jacob approached rarely being in the lineup last season. He just kept going and going — and now he’s grappling alongside his brother, instead of squaring off against him like he did when they were six, seven or maybe eight.

“(Our mom), she didn’t like us wrestling each other much, and obviously fighting at the house too much,” Jacob Frost said. “That’s why I ended up always wrestling a weight class above him. We wrestled each other way back in the day a little bit, but she didn’t like that too much so we split.”

Only when it comes to competition. The Frosts naturally room together and take all the same classes. They’re joined at the hip in one sense, even as Evan has faced some struggles while cutting weight as Jacob can be relatively carefree in terms of his diet.

Dresser’s just happy to have both of them in his room — even though he finds it hard to tell them apart.

“If they wrestle really good, I’ll take twins all day long,” he quipped. “If they can’t wrestle worth a dang, I don’t want ‘em.”

Lineup Limbo 

Iowa State already lost All-American 149-pounder Casey Swiderski (who had dropped to 141) and promising sophomore 165-pounder Connor Euton to injury this season, while seeing 2022 All-American Yonger Bastida wrestle sparingly because of a knee strain.

Now current 149-pounder Anthony Echemendia — an All-American at 141 last season — will be out four-to-six weeks with a high ankle sprain.

“He really got that thing cranked on,” Dresser said. “I wish I could put a finger, or pinpoint (why there are so many injuries). I’ve been doing this a long time. One year when I was at Virginia Tech, we had a very similar year where we just couldn’t get healthy, and we’re in that situation right now. I wish I could pinpoint and say we need to do more of this and less of this. I think it’s just bad luck.”

How bad? Dresser said there’s a chance Bastida, who’s ranked fourth at heavyweight, could end up seeking a medical redshirt.

But there’s also a silver lining to the walking wounded situation, as younger wrestlers such as heavyweight Daniel Herrera have stepped up and performed well when pressed into duty.

The Cyclones will wrestle against North Dakota State this weekend at Dresser’s high school alma mater, Humboldt.

“You’re gonna see guys this weekend that you’ve probably never seen in a varsity singlet at Iowa State,” Dresser said. “And Daniel, when the opportunity arose, he took it. So we don’t know. We’ve got some things to figure out there.”