Hawkeyes work through unexpected injuries

In some respects, the Hawkeyes had little choice.

An injury suffered by Hannah Stuelke in the final minutes of practice Saturday and an injury suffered by Molly Davis during the first half of the Hawkeyes’ 74-66 win over Georgia at Carver-Hawkeye Arena impacted Iowa’s depth.

The Hawkeyes’ bench was outscored 24-0 by the Bulldogs, who picked up 12 points from Javyn Nicholson and had Alisha Lewis come in and score eight points and dish out 10 of the team’s 17 assists.

Three reserves — Sydney Affolter, Addison O’Grady and Davis — combined for 8 minutes, 54 seconds of court time for Iowa in its 28th win of the season.

All five starters logged at least 37 minutes of playing time and guard Caitlin Clark played the entire 40 minutes.

“Whatever it takes,” Clark said.

Stuelke’s absence impacted Iowa’s interior rotation.

The freshman who has been averaging 7 points and 13.2 minutes per game turned an ankle in practice Saturday afternoon.

“It literally happened in the last three minutes of practice,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said. “They did treatments on it (Saturday) night until late and again (Sunday) morning. I really thought she was going to be able to go to, but when she came into the locker room after the first warm-up, I knew it was going to be tough for her.”

Bluder said she believes the Big Ten sixth player of the year should be ready to return to the court for Iowa’s regional semifinal game Friday in Seattle.

“I’m not worried. We’ve got great sports medicine here and they will take care of her,” Bluder said.

Davis’ exit with just under three minutes remaining in the first quarter of a 15-15 game did not look good.

Trainers looked at a knee and she eventually hobbled off to the training room.

Davis did return to the bench later in the first half.

The senior, who backs up both the point and shooting guard positions, was moving well following the game.

Bluder said she does not believe the situation will impact Davis’ availability for the Sweet 16 game.

“I haven’t heard anything (from team medical personnel) yet, but I don’t think so,” Bluder said.

Bluder believes the experience of Iowa’s starting five helped the Hawkeyes work through the situation that developed.

“I’m proud of them for being able to execute like that,” Bluder said. “The nice thing is, with ABC televising, the timeouts are a little longer so that helped us a bit, but Caitlin has to play 40 minutes in this game.

“It’s just unfortunate that Hannah went down and obviously when Molly went down right away, it’s one of those things.”

But the Hawkeyes didn’t blink.

“You have to keep playing,” guard Gabbie Marshall said. “It’s tough when anybody gets hurt, but all you can do is keep going and keep working a team and we did a good job of that. We needed to because Georgia was a tough team.”

Bluder sensed pretty quickly that her team would work through it.

“Honestly, our players never hung their heads. They never got upset about any of that stuff,” Bluder said. “I really credit their maturity.”