No. 21 Iowa surges past No. 18 Iowa State late despite another dominant run from star center Audi Crooks

IOWA CITY, Iowa — The Caitlin Clark era is over, and the Hawkeyes are working to find their footing in what first-year head coach Jan Jensen has predicted would be a bit of a rebuilding year.

You wouldn’t have known it on Wednesday night.

Fans were lining up in blistering 10-degree weather before the doors at Carver-Hawkeye Arena were even open for what was Jensen’s first game leading No. 21 Iowa against in-state rival Iowa State. In the end, with a sold-crowd often as loud as it was during the peak of Clark's historic run behind them, the Hawkeyes were able to power past one of the best centers in all of college basketball.

Iowa surged ahead of Audi Crooks and the Cyclones late to grab a tight 75-69 win on Wednesday night in what was their first true marquee win of the season.

“That is one thing that I will never take for granted,” Jensen said. “Honestly, I watch a lot of great teams on ESPN, scouting games, and I see the sparse crowds … When we got to this moment tonight, that fourth quarter when we finally turned the corner, boy that Carver crowd was there.”

Audi Crooks shows flashes of greatness for Iowa State

There were times on Wednesday night where Crooks looked like she was capable of hanging with the best bigs in the country.

Crooks, a 6-foot-3 sophomore averaging nearly 20 points and more than eight rebounds per game and towers over just about everyone she plays against, was seemingly unstoppable through the first 30 minutes. She made her first four buckets of the game, all layups on post moves from the block, and she helped power the Cyclones to a 12-2 start. She had 27 of her 31 points through three quarters, and Iowa State seemed poised to run away with the game.

But Crooks, who Jensen remembers trying to land back when she was playing in high school in rural northwest Iowa, is more than just brute force inside. Jensen even went as far as to compare her to Dallas Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki.

“Audi is just a great dang kid, let me tell ya … A kid that works like that, she’s so big and strong,” Jensen said. “So people want to say, ‘Oh, she’s big.’ She’s got a beautiful touch. She does a lot of work early. I didn’t go into this game thinking she wasn't going to have 30 … I have a lot of respect for her, for sure.”

But, like the rest of the Cyclones’ game, Crooks largely fell apart in the fourth quarter. She had just four points in the final period, both layups in garbage time when the game was out of reach, and she made several very simple mistakes. She let Hannah Stuelke fly right past her for an uncontested layup to give Iowa the lead just past the midway point of the period, and she gave up an incredibly easy steal with her head turned in the post a few minutes later. Crooks even traveled in the post in the final two minutes just moving her feet wrong.

And, of course, there were the free throws. Crooks went just 3-of-10 from the stripe. She accounted for half of Iowa State’s made free throws in the loss. That allowed the Hawkeyes to mount a late 13-2 run and push ahead to the six-point win.

“Obviously Audi is a really good offensive player,” Iowa State coach Bill Fennelly said. “I thought we did a pretty good job of getting her the ball at the right time. She finished quite a bit … She did her work the way we needed her to. They sent a lot of bodies at her, but she handled it really well.”

Fennelly’s group has had an incredibly tough schedule already this fall. After losing to Northern Iowa, the Cyclones were blown out of the water by South Carolina during Feast Week. The Gamecocks, fresh off a rare loss of their own, beat Iowa State by 40 in Florida. That was, coincidentally, Crooks’ worst game of the season.

The Cyclones will travel to No. 2 UConn next week, too, to wrap up their nonconference slate. They’ve yet to win a game over a ranked opponent. Wednesday night was probably their best spot for that before the Big 12 gets going.

And, to make matters worse, starting guard Kenzie Hare was ruled out for the rest of the season with a hip injury on Wednesday afternoon. She was the team’s third-leading scorer, behind Crooks and Addy Brown.

But, regardless of what happens on Tuesday in Connecticut, the Cyclones will still have a chance to hang with the top of the Big 12 over the coming months. But it's going to be on Crooks to get them there. Their potential, both this year and in the years to come, will be centered around her.

As for the Hawkeyes, it's unclear how far they'll be able to go immediately after back-to-back runs to the national championship game. The Big Ten, now with top-ranked UCLA and USC led by JuJu Watkins at the top of the conference, it will be even harder to run the table the way they have in years past.

But with transfer Lucy Olsen leading the way — she dropped 25 points on Wednesday night and is averaging a team-high 18.1 per game — the culture surrounding the program hasn’t taken a hit with Clark and longtime coach Lisa Bluder in the rearview window. So long as that’s there, and the Hawkeyes can at a minimum hold their own in big games like Wednesday night, that “rebuilding” period that Jensen predicted they would go through won’t be around for very long.