Kristi Seeger and the UW women’s basketball team (17-18, 5-9 Big Ten) have been one of the best rebounding teams in the Big Ten this season.
In their matchup against the Hawkeyes, however, the Badgers were out-rebounded 24 to 33, and UW’s towering center, Lello Gebisa, who stands at 6-foot-7, finished with just one rebound.
The Badgers rebounding woes, coupled with their scoring inconsistencies, ultimately sealed Wisconsin’s fate against Iowa.
The Hawkeyes finished the game on a 19-2 run and held the Badgers to just three field goals in the game’s final 13 minutes.
When asked about her team’s second-half collapse on the offensive end, UW head coach Jane Albright pointed to Wisconsin’s lack of depth as one of the reasons for the Badgers’ lengthy scoring drought.
“We played a lot of players a lot more minutes than they’re used to,” Albright said. “We think we can go that long with people playing that many minutes. Maybe they wore out mentally or physically, but I know they certainly were willing to do the same things. We probably could have subbed more … but it could have been their defense; it could have been a lot of different things.”
After playing an outstanding first half of basketball in which they shot better than 55 percent from the floor, the Badgers would connect on just 10 of their 29 field-goal attempts in the game’s second stanza.
“I thought we did some really nice things today,” Albright said. “We were able to get an 8-point lead, had a lot of emotion and were able to score some buckets. Then, for whatever reason, we just didn’t score in the last eight minutes of the half. We’ll have to go back and look at the film and see what it was.”
UW shooting guard Stephanie Rich in particular had a tough time finding open looks in the second half. Heading into halftime, the Crawfordsville, Iowa, native had a game-high 16 points on 6-of-11 shooting.
She would finish the game with just 21 points, however; she connected on just two of her six second-half field-goal attempts.
“[Iowa played] great defense. You can’t take anything away from them,” Rich said. “[The Hawkeyes] are physical; you get elbows in the face and right in the chest — anything. It wasn’t that they picked up their defense (in the second half); we just lost confidence in our shooting. We weren’t rebounding, and it just got to us.”
UW center Emily Ashbaugh, like Rich, didn’t think Iowa made any major defensive adjustments in the second half, but thought that UW’s lack of confidence played a greater role in the Badgers’ offensive letdown.
“I think that we got a little less confident with the ball and a little less confident with our shots as the game wore down,” Ashbaugh said. “I think that our offensive tendencies are what made a difference in the end of the game. I’m not sure that it was all their defense … it was good defense the whole game.”
Wisconsin will look to rebound from their loss to Iowa when they play Minnesota Thursday. If the Badgers hope to pick up a victory against the Gophers, they will need to do a better job of crashing the boards and shooting the ball than they did Sunday.
