No. 24 Iowa 84, Purdue 63: Freshmen Fuel First B1G W

Addi O’Grady led Iowa with 12 points in a balanced scoring performance as the Hawkeyes outpaced Purdue, 84-63 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena Sunday. While O’Grady was the only Hawkeye in double-figure scoring, five of her teammates scored nine apiece, including freshman center Ava Heiden, who also finished with a team-high eight rebounds.

The win is Jan Jensen‘s first as a head coach in Big Ten play, and moves the Hawkeyes to 11-2 (1-1). Iowa has won 19 straight games at Carver-Hawkeye Arena as a program, including all six of its games there this season.

Sunday’s game was never in serious doubt. Not only did Purdue come in as heavy underdogs, but both times the Boilermakers made a push in the contest — a 12-2 run to cut the Hawkeyes’ lead to five in the second quarter, a 13-0 run in the third to cut it back to eight — Iowa responded immediately.

“I think when we had the lull, we shot quickly, we had turnovers, and we didn’t stay true to what we typically do,” said Jensen. “We kind of forced some things.”

Iowa finished the first half on a 15-3 run, capped by an Aaliyah Guyton contested jumper, to push its halftime lead to a significantly safer 50-32:

After a series of self-inflicted Hawkeye errors led to Purdue’s 13-point push in the third quarter, Iowa had an immediate 16-0 counterstrike, effectively granting the game safe passage to the realm of Chips and Salsa Time.

The decisive run was keyed by Syd Affolter, another nine-point scorer in the win, along with seven rebounds, a team-high four steals and a tie with Lucy Olsen for the team high in assists (six).

Affolter scored the first basket of the run by beating her defender one-on-one for a layup, and by the time Teagan Mallegni dropped in a turnaround jumper to push Iowa’s lead to 71-47, Affolter had registered her third assist of the run, along with the two aforementioned points, four rebounds and a steal.

Ballgame.

Freshman Taylor Stremlow finished with (yep) nine points — a career-high for the freshman, which almost seems hard to believe — and she did it by making all four of her shots from the field, including a banked-in three-pointer (it still counts the same) and this euro-step layup that took the scenic route on its way through the hoop:

Stremlow also found her 6’4″ classmate Heiden with a looping entry pass for an easy layup, a near-balletic catch-and-score that a pair of true freshmen frankly have no business making look so easy, especially in Big Ten play.

At times this season, Jensen has rolled out lineups of Olsen and her four true freshmen in the rotation: Aaliyah Guyton, Stremlow, Mallegni and Heiden. It’s a nice message to all the new faces on the floor that they’re integral to the team’s success from the get-go, but on Sunday Jensen ran her four freshmen out with Affolter to finish off the first half.

That lineup won its 4:40 stretch of court time 15-5.

That Jensen can trust her crew of freshmen so readily, so quickly and with such positive results to already show for it means Iowa’s upward trajectory in the Jensen Era is still a matter of the imagination. This team not only needs its freshmen, it insists upon them and they deliver in kind.

The Hawkeyes play next on January 1 at Penn State, tipping off at noon. Regrettably, that game is streaming only on Big Ten Plus.

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