How Clark and Czinano Led Iowa to a Victory Against Georgia in March Madness

51

Catilin Clark was not at her best level, but she still played really good and led the Hawkeyes to win their second-round women’s NCAA Tournament game. She got 22 points and 12 assists in total, helping the Iowa team beat Georgia 74-66.

The Hawkeyes, the number 2 seed in the Seattle Regional 4 tournament, didn’t score for the first 13 minutes of their game against the 10th ranked Lady Bulldogs. But then Clark from the Hawkeyes scored 14 points in the second half and even helped out 30 more points to get them closer to winning. Although she only made 6 out of 17 shots, her contribution was valuable for Iowa’s victory.

Clark said it was very special to be one of the 16 teams who are still playing basketball. But they weren’t too excited as this wasn’t their main goal. All that she wanted was to get a win, and although she could have done better with her shots, she was happy with what happened.

The player said she might have made a few more shots, but sometimes that just happens. The Georgia coach also complimented the team on containing the other player who usually scores 27 points every game. Coach Abrahamson-Henderson thought they did a great job to stop her from scoring too many points.

Monika Czinano, Gabbie Marshall, and McKenna Warnock all scored to lead Iowa in their game. Monika’s score of 20 was the biggest contribution, while Gabbie added 15 points and McKenna had 14. With these good scores from the female players, Iowa team successfully completed the game and replaced their last season’s second-round home loss memory against Creighton.

Georgia got close to Iowa at a score of 68-66 due to Audrey Warren hitting a 3-pointer 2:17 minutes before the end of the game. But Georgia couldn’t make up this difference since they turned over three times consecutively and they also failed to score a layup during that time.

Abrahamson-Henderson said that her team ran a lot, even though many people think Iowa was the better team. She also stated that her team did an amazing job as the underdogs of this competition and there was no underdog today.

At the beginning of the game, Iowa had a ten-point lead because Marshall and Warnock made five three-pointers in one quarter. However, Georgia came back with a 14-3 run, taking over the lead. In the end, Iowa managed to barely get ahead of Georgia with 41 points to Georgia’s 40 by halftime.

In this first half of the game, two players from Georgia scored 12 points each: Brittney Smith and Javyn Nicholson.

Iowa will continue playing against the winner of another game between Duke and Colorado.

Iowa’s freshman forward Hannah Stuelke was absent due to an ankle injury that happened during practice on Saturday. Bluder, Iowa’s coach, noted that around three minutes were left in the practice before the incident occured. The day before her injury, she scored 14 points and made all of her shots in their 93-45 win against Southeastern Louisiana. On average throughout the season, she normally gets 7 points and 4.2 rebounds per game. Bluder expects Stuelke to recover by next weekend for the regional semifinal match.

The Lady Bulldogs, playing under their first-year head coach Abrahamson-Henderson, came close to making it to the Sweet Sixteen but couldn’t quite make it. Before Sunday’s game, the team had a record of nine wins and two losses. Abrahamson-Henderson commented that both teams were really good today and one of them was Georgia for sure.

The Iowa Hawkeyes got a lower score than the 87.8 points they usually get, but still managed to fight through a difficult zone defense from Georgia which caused them to make 17 turnovers.