The Iowa women have been tearing it up for several months now, but it hasn't always been easy to watch them play -- several of the games have been on BTN Plus, BTN's subscription-only streaming service. Fortunately, this week's games (tonight against Minnesota and Saturday night against Ohio State) are both on BTN proper, which means they're much easier to see. So we figured why not have a proper game thread for the games?
This is Iowa's first game of the season against Minnesota; it seems a bit late in the year to be playing someone for the first time (or not: the men still haven't played Rutgers, Penn State, Illinois, or Indiana yet this season), but that's the way the scheduling cookie crumbles. Minnesota is 20-6 overall, 9-5 in Big Ten play, three games back of the second-place Hawkeyes. This could be a pretty high-scoring affair -- Iowa and Minnesota rank #2 and #4 in the league in scoring offense (79.3 ppg, 76.1 ppg) and #12 (70.1 ppg) and #11 (69.2 ppg) in scoring defense. The Gophers are also the best defensive rebounding team in the league (29.9 rpg) and near the top in blocks (5.8 bpg), too. Minnesota's led by 6-5 C Amanda Zahui B, averaging 17.4 ppg (4th in the B1G) , 11.7 rpg (1st in the B1G), 3.8 bpg (1st in the B1G) while shooting 55% (5th in the B1G) from the field. Bethany Doolittle is going to have her hands full trying to slow her down.
Tonight's game against Minnesota gets underway at 8 PM CT, with TV coverage from BTN (and an online stream at BTN2Go).
The usual game thread rules apply: no links to illegal online streams, no porn, no politics, no religion, no slurs. Don't be an ass.