Iowa Women’s Basketball Embracing Changes

One of the last moves of Jan Jensen’s transition into her new role as the head coach of Iowa’s women’s basketball team was to move into the big office.

Lisa Bluder, who announced her retirement in May, was still employed by the university through the end of June, so technically, it was still her office.

Jensen said she wanted to wait until everything was moved out.

“Every day,” she said, “it feels more like home.”

Thursday was the media’s first look at the Hawkeyes under Jensen, a different team without its familiar head coach and without guard Caitlin Clark, the two-time consensus national player of the year who led Iowa to back-to-back national championship games and left having become college basketball’s all-time leading scorer.

Still, the Hawkeyes are the Hawkeyes, even if some of the names and voices have changed.

“I know it’s going to be difficult,” Jensen said. “I know it’s going to be hard. To me, it’s just different. The challenge is fun.

“Every year we do this, you have to go into it knowing it’s different. This year, it’s a whole lot different, because we lost a generational player.”

The transition between head coaches took all of about a half-hour on May 13. Bluder’s retirement announcement came first, then came the announcement that Jensen, Bluder’s top assistant from the beginning of her time with the Hawkeyes in 2000, was taking over the job.

“We know who she is and she knows who we are,” guard Kylie Feuerbach said of the change. “There wasn’t much of an adjustment. It was a very smooth transition.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same, yet there will be tweaks here and there. Abby Stamp, Tania Davis and Raina Harmon stayed on assistant coaches, while former Hawkeye player Randi Henderson was added as an assistant and Sean Sullivan comes back to be an assistant coach and the team’s general manager.

“There’s not that much that seems different, other than going to Jan every day for things, and not having Lisa around,” Stamp said. “As we go along, that’s going to be the biggest challenge for all of us, Jan included, to know what we did well, to know what to keep and know when to think about something new or try something new.

“I think Lisa was good at that. We didn’t try to stick in our ways for Lisa’s entire career. She learned, she changed, she grew, she took input from everyone around her. There was such an evolution throughout that, these changes moving forward, seem somewhat miniscule at this time.”

Stamp said keeping the staff intact also made things easier.

“One thing we all heard from Lisa, over and over, was, ‘Everybody gets to keep their jobs,’” she said. “We’re incredibly fortunate to not have to move families, not have to restart everything, but at the same time have the mindset that this is new, we are going to have to do different things, and we’re going to have to challenge ourselves in different ways, to step out from our comfort zones.

“I think that’s been a fun thing for all of us — you have to be willing to step out and make mistakes. It’s easier to make mistakes in the summer than in the middle of the season, but it’s been pretty energizing.”

Jensen said she looks at things a little differently now in a different role.

“I think it’s more double-checking,” she said. “When you’re with Lisa and Jenni (Fitzgerald) for so long, it’s more sharing responsibility but at the end of the day, Lisa was wearing all of it. But when you slide over (into the head coaching role), I just feel responsible for it. You want to be good for your team, you want to be good for the fans, I want to be good for the staff. I think I feel more of that responsibility.

“I feel like I’m the double-checking queen. Even things I wouldn’t have double-checked before, I do that a little more. There’s a little more of, ‘The buck stops here.’ Not in a negative way, just more of an understanding.”

Practices, for the most part, remain the same.

“Sometimes I can see if we need to spend time on a drill a little bit longer,” Jensen said. “With Lisa, we would move on and fix it tomorrow. I’m a little more, if we’re not quite where I want it to be at, we’ll spend time on it a little bit longer.

“Summers are always pretty light and carefree. There’s no set lineup — everybody’s getting reps, everybody’s undefeated. I think that’s the same. I build in more time to chat and talk about it.”

“They’re pretty similar,” Feuerbach said when asked to compare Jensen and Bluder. “They’re just great people. You know they mean well, no matter what they’re saying, and they care about you. That’s a great reason why it’s been a smooth transition. They’re similar in the sense of they are the same people, they want the same goals, and they have a similar way of approaching that.”

Jensen doesn’t think about comparisons.

“I’m not trying to live up to anything,” she said. “Lisa will always be my personal GOAT, one of the best to ever do it. Being a part of that, there’s a lot of confidence and comfort.”

Being in the office means there are greater responsibilities.

“The meetings,” Jensen said, laughing. “Oh my gosh, all of the meetings.

“I’ve learned the work days are full. But I love everything about it.”