Hawkeyes Reach 20-Win Milestone

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Feb. 16, 2011

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By ADAM MEIER

IOWA CITY, Iowa — The color pink symbolizes the emotions of love and joy, and the Hawkeye women’s basketball team displayed both in their white and pink jerseys Wednesday night as they defeated Wisconsin, 59-44, on Mediacom Court inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Iowa played with love for the game, with love for one another, and came away joyful after winning its third straight and improving to 20-7 overall, 8-6 in the Big Ten Conference.

The loss left the Badgers alone in third place at 9-4 in conference play and 14-11 overall.

Kamille Wahlin led the Hawkeyes with 19 points on 8 of 14 shooting. Morgan Johnson scored 13 points and Jamie Printy added 12. Kachine Alexander was held in check offensively, but she made her impact in other ways, grabbing 11 rebounds and dishing out seven assists, along with six points.

“I feel very good coming out with this win,” UI head coach Lisa Bluder said. “Wisconsin is a really good team and this was a defensive battle by both teams.”

After creeping out to an 11-9 lead halfway through the first half, the Hawkeyes began to get it going offensively. Kelly Krei made a 3-pointer from the corner with six minutes left and Wahlin hit her second from beyond the arc three minutes later to push the lead to 17-11.

“Kamille had a really nice game for us,” Bluder said. “I thought she shot the ball so strong. She just looked strong every time she took the ball.”

“I think Wisconsin was really keying on Kachine and Jamie,” Wahlin said. “I feel like that really opened things up for me. I tried to score but I also wanted to create for them and draw defenders to me.”

With under two minutes until halftime, it was Johnson’s turn to make her presence felt. The sophomore tallied a three-point play followed shortly by another basket, which extended the lead to double-digits. Printy then knocked down a pair of foul shots with under a minute remaining to give the Hawkeyes a 24-11 advantage heading into the locker room.

The Badgers made only five of their 26 field goal attempts in the first half.

“We were trying to create a little more chaos,” Wahlin said about Iowa’s defense. “We had some really good traps on the inside and we controlled the paint. That disrupted their offense a bit.”

“We didn’t want them to get good looks inside,” Bluder added. “Their post players are very active.”

Iowa was unable to sustain the dominant defense it played in the first half early into the second period. The Badgers were red-hot coming out of the break and scored 18 points in the first six minutes of the half, in contrast to the 11 they scored in the first 20 minutes of the game.

The Hawkeye lead was cut to just four with 14 minutes left in the game, but a timeout called by Bluder refocused the team. Iowa proceeded to go on a quick 7-0 run over the next 65 seconds, capped by a trailing Printy 3-pointer opened up from a run out by Alexander after her rebound. The outburst put the Hawkeyes ahead, 40-29.

“I thought Wisconsin came out of the locker room with a little bit more intensity than we did,” Bluder said. “We just asked them to play a little bit harder in that timeout and I think they did that.”

Wisconsin fought back to within four once again with eight minutes remaining, but that was all the closer the Badgers could get. Wahlin used a pass fake to lure the defense away and drove in for a layup to put the lead at six. Johnson and Wahlin then hit consecutive open jumpers and Printy added another 3-pointer to push to lead to 53-42 with 3:35 remaining.

Alexander then put an exclamation point on the game by executing a one-handed, full-court pass to a wide open Krei, who finished the layup to put the game out of reach with two minutes to go.

The Hawkeyes play their final home game of the year on Thursday, Feb. 24, against Illinois. The game is set to start at 7:30 p.m.