‘Celebrate the pass’: Iowa’s ball movement is key for Hawkeyes moving on in March

INDIANAPOLIS — Late in the second quarter of Iowa’s win over Illinois in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten Women’s Basketball Tournament on Friday night, Chit-Chat Wright was leading a 3-on-2 fastbreak for the Hawkeyes when she suddenly dropped the ball backward between her legs to Taylor Stremlow, who wasn’t expecting such an audacious pass. 

“Chat’s done that about twice now, so I should have picked up on it a little bit sooner,” Stremlow said after the game. But as soon as she realized what had happened, she drew inspiration from her teammate. In one motion, Stremlow gathered the ball and whipped a one-hand pass that split multiple defenders and found Wright under the basket for an easy bucket. 

“I knew Strem was behind me,” Wright said. “I looked back and saw she had kind of fumbled it, so then I was like, wait, I’m open, and then she passed it.”

The highlight-reel moment earned one of the loudest pops of the night from the extremely pro-Iowa crowd inside Gainbridge Fieldhouse, which included former stars Kate Martin and Gabbie Marshall, as well as school president Barbara Wilson. 

“I knew [the fans] were gonna get hype, so that’s why I did it,” Wright said. 

Wright started and finished the play, but the assist went to Stremlow, one of a team-high six for the sophomore guard. As a team, the Hawkeyes dished out 20 assists on 26 made field goals in a 64-58 victory that was nowhere near as close as the final score would indicate. 

With the win, Iowa advanced to the semifinals of the Big Ten tourney, and will face Michigan on Saturday afternoon with a trip to the championship on the line. To get there, and later, to make a run in the NCAA Tournament, the Hawkeyes will rely on their balanced offensive approach that’s heavy on ball movement and, at times, too unselfish. 

“I’ve been at Iowa since 2000, and that’s just been engrained in the philosophy that we’ve always had,” Hawkeyes coach Jan Jensen said. “We just really always celebrate the pass. We try to make almost a bigger deal out of the pass on some occasions than the score itself.”

That was certainly the case on the Wright-Stremlow highlight. 

For the season, the Hawkeyes are second in the country in assist rate at 70.6%. In fact, that’s the fourth-best assist rate by any Division I team in the last five seasons, per CBB Analytics.

“You try to drill it, you try to let them know what option one and option two is, but they’re a pretty selfless team for the most part,” Jensen said. “It’s a little by design, but I think it’s a little bit about the young women I’m blessed to coach and try to recruit to that. You come here and you want to be a part of it… it’s a pretty fun system to play in.”

The Hawkeyes’ willingness to share the ball has helped create one of the most efficient offenses in the country. Iowa is 23rd in offensive rating (110.2), second in assist rate (70.6%), seventh in assist-to-turnover rate (1.44) and 11th in points in the paint per game (39.1). 

“Our team is just willing to share the ball,” said Wright, who leads the team with 4.7 assists per game. “Just not being selfish. You’re eventually gonna get your shot when the ball gets passed around. Whoever gets the open shot, that’s who gets it and we all celebrate.”

The Hawkeyes had five players with at least nine points against Illinois — fitting for their offense-by-committee approach. Remarkably, Iowa is 19th in the country in points per game (79), but only has one player in the top-200 in the country in scoring. (Ava Heiden, who led the way against Illinois, is 66th at 17.6 points per game.)

“We all really trust each other a lot, on and off the court, so it makes it really easy to pass up a good shot for a great shot, and we do a great job of getting each other open,” senior forward Hannah Stuelke, the team’s second-leading scorer, said.

“It makes it harder on the defense, they have to guard all of us because we’re all capable of making shots,” Stuelke continued. “That’s what makes it so special.”

A return to the Big Ten Tournament final would be special, too. The Hawkeyes won three Big Ten tourneys in a row from 2022-24 with Caitlin Clark leading the way, but were knocked out in the quarterfinals last season in heartbreaking fashion.