Everything Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said after the South Carolina game
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South Carolina defeated Iowa, 87-75, on Sunday to win the 2024 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament. After the game, Hawkeyes head coach Lisa Bluder spoke with the media. Here is what she had to say.
Opening Statement
LISA BLUDER: Just want to congratulate South Carolina. That is a tremendous basketball team. Coach Staley obviously, congratulations to them.
I’m proud of my team, though. Finishing national runner-up two years in a row is an amazing feat. Nobody thought we were going to be here at the beginning of the year, so that makes it pretty special.
Always saying good-bye to your seniors is really, really tough. And every time you see a season end it’s another chapter closed, and that’s tough. But I know we’re going to look back on this and be very, very proud of the effort we gave this year.
Q. Congratulations on the season you had. Two parts to this. One, I went back and looked. Caitlin’s freshman year, your first games were not even on (indiscernible) or cable TV. They had to be streamed. I hear a lot of people talk about this being a moment, you already hear people talk about Caitlin as a one-off, trying to talk about the audience that is involved here. What would you say to people who try to make this about just being one player as opposed to opportunity for the audience? Then second one is if you could talk about the way Caitlin’s performance and time at Iowa is going to impact how you recruit going forward.
LISA BLUDER: Yeah, it’s interesting that those games were streamed. I think we were playing at, like, 3:00 in the afternoon during COVID and things like that. So really not giving anybody an opportunity to watch our games.
Caitlin has certainly been a tremendous star for our game, but there are so many stars in our game. We have, many, many. So we’re just going to latch onto that next one next year.
And there’s lots of them. There’s not just one. Even this year, there were so many. That’s what makes her getting the player of the year award so special because it wasn’t a runaway. It was a really, really hard decision because there’s so many good players out there.
I’m hoping with our success, I think success breeds success. Definitely I feel recruiting going forward. We’ve opened up our geographic footprint. And I think that’s going to bode well for Iowa in the future.
Q. Now that her career is over, can you put it into words what it means and what it’s going to mean going forward, not just for — for her, for Iowa, for women’s basketball, for all of it?
LISA BLUDER: She has raised the excitement of our sport. There’s no doubt. Just because she does things in a different way than anybody else can do. Plus she has all the intangibles. She’s a great student. She’s a great role model. She does everything — she loves being that role model.
I really think that, when she came in as a freshman and she said, we’re going to the Final Four, a lot of people laughed at her and maybe even laughed at her for coming to Iowa, quite honestly.
But she believed, we believed, and she got everybody else in that locker room to believe. And that is not an easy thing to do.
So her just belief in everybody around her, it just grew and grew. You could say the same thing about this year, quite honestly.
I don’t know if I answered your question completely, but I think that she has done amazing things to grow our game and doing it the right way.
Q. Being here in back-to-back years, especially with the expansion coming to the Big Ten next year, what’s the importance, and what does this mean for the Big Ten as a conference?
LISA BLUDER: I hope it means a lot. I’m so proud to be a part of the Big Ten Conference. It’s a great conference. We go against super competition every single night, great coaches, great athletes. And it prepares us for this. It prepares us for being on the biggest stage.
But I really go back to quite a long time ago when the Big Ten said we’re going to put a network out there, and we’re going to be a national sports network. I remember when Jim Delany came into the women’s coaches room, and I was, like, what? What is he talking about?
Look what happened. We were the first ones out there. And then everyone had to follow suit to keep up. So I’m very, very proud to be a part of the Big Ten. And I think our leadership is really, really good with Megan Kahn, too.
Q. Everybody knows South Carolina, one of their biggest advantages is how deep they are, 37 bench points. The first quarter, Bree went out, and they put Raven — how hard is it to game plan for so many different weapons and so many looks they can throw at Caitlin?
LISA BLUDER: That was a huge advantage because I think they played nine people in double figures. We had six. Just to have those extra fouls and extra legs. They didn’t have to play too hard. Even the other night, they were resting people the other night.
One thing that we’ve always been able to do is really push the ball and really run. We did score pretty well. We scored 20 more points than other people do against South Carolina, so we did score pretty well.
But, yeah, to be able to have all those fresh legs on Caitlin was really tough.
And not only their depth, their height. I’m not just talking about their centers. They’re really pretty big at every position, which makes it hard. They could recover really well when we had 3s.
Q. Lisa, I’m going to ask you a similar question to what I asked Caitlin, to know that Dawn praised Caitlin on the stage out there. With all that Dawn means to women’s basketball, what does that mean for you, in terms of who Dawn is, and what does it mean to know that Caitlin is not done. She’s going to continue to be a big deal and hopefully for many years to come in this profession?
LISA BLUDER: Obviously, Dawn Staley is the leader of women’s basketball right now. She’s our Olympic coach. She is the person that we are all looking up to. And she’s somebody that, when she says something like that to a player, it should make them feel really good.
I’m thrilled that she acknowledged Caitlin and her greatness, I really am. I think that Caitlin is going to continue to have this kind of impact in the WNBA. Indiana is doing well with their ticket sales. I know Las Vegas had to move to a different, bigger arena when Indiana comes to town. So those are all really good signs that women’s basketball is in a good spot.
Q. Coach Bluder, what a journey with this team. I remember when you guys signed Caitlin Clark and nobody really knew who she was at that point. Just thinking about what you guys have all taught her and apparently how to be a more compassionate person, how to be a leader. It’s true that growth goes both ways. You maybe never even had a group like this before. What has this group taught you, or in what ways have they made you think differently?
LISA BLUDER: Well, people did know about her. She was the fourth best player coming out of the country. People did know about her obviously. We really had to work hard to get her, to keep her in the state.
This group — I really hope that I haven’t changed a lot, to be quite honest. I changed in how I had to coach Caitlin because there was that line you had to walk between discipline and don’t put out the fire. So there was that line.
But honestly I don’t think I’ve changed as a person. The values that I have now are the values that I’ve always had. The things that we really try to build as a team with trust and caring for each other, I’ve always tried to coach that way.
Q. Congrats on a great season. I want to ask you about Hannah Stuelke. Very likely without her performance in the semifinals, you guys aren’t here today. Can you just tell me how she’s grown this season, and even in these last couple weeks, against the really tough assignments throughout the contest?
LISA BLUDER: Hannah Stuelke, first of all, was a power forward up until about the beginning of November. So she really has adapted to her position. She didn’t really want to be a center, but we convinced her that she needed that. And if it was best for the team, she would do it.
She obviously has improved her game so much this year and used — and everybody focused on she’s not tall enough, she’s not tall enough. You have other assets, right? You’ve got speed. You’ve got agility. Use those assets. And she has done it.
Even though she wasn’t playing the position she really desired and wanted to play, didn’t matter. She came and gave it everything she could all day.
We talked about her growth as a young woman, as far as mentally and confidence-wise. And that gives me a lot of joy when I see my women just growing in that area of their lives because I know that’s going to last forever.
Q. Coach, maybe a consolation scenario, but you lost to Coach Mulkey last year. Four titles for her. And you lose to Coach Staley this year. Three titles for her. What does that put you for the standard you may have reached knowing you did really well against these two coaches but just came up a little short?
LISA BLUDER: It kind of makes me a double loser right now, quite honestly. It’s tough. But I know how hard it is to get here too. I say that tongue in cheek because I know it is really, really difficult to get to a Final Four. For us to be national runner-ups two years in a row, I’m never going to apologize.
So many people last year, oh, you’ll do it next time, like it was terrible we didn’t win the national championship. So many people said that to me. I’m like, darn, you guys, we’re national runner-ups. That’s pretty good too.
So I’m never going to apologize for finishing second in the country. But it sure would be nice to win one.
Q. How did it feel to coach these amazing girls?
LISA BLUDER: It’s so empowering being around these women. I mean, to be around women that are driven every single day, that come to work positive and believing in themselves and each other, it is so empowering.
I wish everybody’s workplace could be like mine is, and the world would be a whole lot better place.
But I think you are well on your way, Lily. I really do. I think you’re going to be in that driver’s seat real soon. You’re amazing.
Q. Going off what this gentleman before had asked you, recruiting, fan base, national awareness, two years in a row national runner-up. It hurts now, but six months from now, what will you be able to take away from it, or how will you feel when you know that you went head to head and hung in the entire game with probably one of the best, if not the best team in the history of the sport?
LISA BLUDER: It’s kind of hard to process right now. I pray that our team will still get the fan support even when Caitlin leaves. I mean, we have five seniors leaving.
So, yeah, we’re going to be young. We’re going to have some growing pains next year. But I hope that people respect the way that we play, the way that we do things, and they’re going to want to support this young group of Hawkeyes next year, just as much as they have after the success we’ve had the last couple of years. So I just hope it maintains.
