Sometimes there is just pain.  Chazadi Wright’s turnaround jumper with one second left in regulation missed and the season slipped away for the Iowa Hawkeyes. Then the Hawkeyes missed two shots at the end of the first overtime, a 3-pointer by Taylor Stremlow and a putback attempt by Ava Heiden. It seemed that it was not their destiny to make the Sweet 16 as the final score read 83-75 to the No.10 Cavaliers in double overtime. After the game, the players could not contain their emotions, especially the two who played their last games as Hawkeyes. 

“I’m really thankful for the opportunity to play here,” an emotional Hannah Stuelke said. “it’s been a lot of fun, and just spending time with these—you’re going to make me cry. spending time with these girls has been such a blessing to me. Obviously not the way you wanted the game to go, but, yeah, I think I’ll carry it throughout my life and learn from it and, I’ll be a stronger person for it.”

Stuelke is a soft-spoken post player from Cedar Rapids who was always a Hawkeye fan. “I always wanted to go to Iowa as a kid,” Stuelke had said while committing here. “That’s where I wanted to go. I knew it. I’ve always lived here, grew up a Hawkeye fan.” Cut to four years later she is exiting the program as a 2-time Second-team All-Big Ten and 1-time Big Ten Sixth Player Of The Year. 

She has seen the highs of the National Championship game but has also been the cornerstone of rebuilding the program post Caitlin Clark and Lisa Bluder. Over the course of her career, Stuelke became the seventh player in Iowa history to capture more than 1,500 points and over 850 rebounds. Naturally, this arc coming to such an end is heartbreaking. The Same goes for Kylie Feuerbach.

“Yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard. It’s hard.” Feurenbach said with tears in her eyes. “I loved every second here. Luckily, I’ve gotten more time here than the normal person with my extra year, so it’s been awesome. I’m just grateful. It’s hard, but this can’t define my time here. There’s been a lot of highs, so I’ll remember those more than I’ll remember these, but these definitely hurt in the moment.”

For Feuerbach, the story is a little different. She transferred from rivals Iowa State after her freshman season because  “everything aligned really well” with the Hawkeyes. She has been the cornerstone of the program ever since, including the one redshirt year through her ACL injury. She came into the starting lineup last season and has been a very important defensive piece for Jan Jensen. It was a disappointing way to bow out, but every Hawkeye should have their heads held high regardless.

Jan Jensen Explains How Iowa Hawkeyes Overperformed This Season

It’s easy to forget that Jan Jensen is still in her second year as head coach. The turnover they went through is not small. Losing arguably the best player in their program history and a coach that has built it from the ground up. 

“I was often asked about a month ago if this team had exceeded expectations, and I didn’t know exactly how to answer that at the offset of one of those questions because I hadn’t thought about it,” Jan Jensen said after the game. “But when I really delved into it a little bit, I do believe they did. Nobody really had us in that top five in the Big 10 conference, and we had a lot of youth. We had sprinkled in some stellar young women who were seniors. As we began the trajectory, it was a lot of the young people that were stepping up.”

Jensen went 23-11 (10-8) in her first season with the team and that record includes both the Big Ten and NCAA Tournaments. This season, Iowa reached the Big Ten Finals and finished with a total record of 27-7. They jumped from being the No. 6 seed to the No. 2 seed. New heroes like Chazadi Wright and Ava Heiden emerged. Heiden went from a 5-point-per-game player to leading the team with 18 points per game. This team has grown and Jensen will get back to her drawing board, getting ready for the upcoming transfer portal.