Bluder’s masterpiece takes Iowa to new heights
Lisa Bluder comes in strutting and dancing. Almost immediately, there are shrieks inside Iowa’s practice facility.
This was long before Iowa took down LSU 94-87 in the Elite Eight on Monday. It was even before the official start of Iowa’s 2023-24 regular season.
As players and staff members wait, the door cracks open. And here comes Bluder.
She is dressed in pink. Pink top. Pink pants. A pink bandana around her neck. But that’s not all.
She wears a long, ultra-blonde wig. Sunglasses shaped into two hearts. And a cowboy hat.
Lisa Bluder is here. But on this day, she is dressed up as someone slightly different: Bluder Barbie.
She flaunts her way across the floor. Her players are losing it in laughter.
Getting dressed up in honor of Halloween has become a tradition for Bluder. Some of her favorite costumes over the years? Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to name one. Flo, to name another.
“Like from Progressive?” Bluder is later asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Bluder says. “Yeah, got to love that character.”
This season, it’s Bluder Barbie. “I feel like at the end of October, we’ve been practicing really hard for a long time,” Bluder explains.
“The players need some kind of comedy relief. And let them laugh at me. I’d rather have them laugh at me than each other.”
This moment is a brief but insightful window into who Bluder is and how she’s accomplished big things with this group and, more broadly, at Iowa.
After falling to LSU in the 2023 national championship game, Iowa came out on top in Monday’s rematch. The Hawkeyes are going to back-to-back Final Fours for the first time in program history.
Admittedly, Iowa is not here without its generational player Caitlin Clark, who posted an absurd stat line of 41 points, 12 assists and seven rebounds in Monday’s win. Nor are they here without the supporting cast of Kate Martin, who had 21 points, Sydney Affolter, who had 16, and others.
But this is also a testament to what Bluder has built at Iowa.
The program she’s poured so much into has become a masterpiece of epic proportions.
“She loves basketball and loves to be around the game,” Martin said of Bluder. “And you kinda take on the personality of your coach sometimes, you know? She just comes in positive every single day. She wants to get better, so we want to get better. I think it’s just everything that she’s built here that trickles down. And then you have player-led teams. I think those are the best teams — the player-led ones. And we’ve just kinda embodied that culture that she’s created.”
What Bluder has done at Iowa is not only remarkable but also rare. This is her 24th season at the helm of the Hawkeyes, a lengthy tenure uncommon in a transient profession. She is the program’s winningest coach. She has led Iowa to 18 NCAA Tournament appearances.
The recent run is even more astounding.
Since 2019? A Sweet 16. An Elite
Eight. Two Final Fours. During that stretch, Iowa has notched at least 20 wins in each of those seasons, including two that have gone over 30.
“When I stepped on campus when I first visited, I could just feel the family atmosphere, how close the girls were, how close the girls were to the coaches,” Gabbie Marshall said last month. “You don’t see that everywhere. You don’t see (those) coach, player relationships. I think just what you guys see Coach Bluder as is who she is. She’s so real. She doesn’t put on this fake facade. Coach Bluder is who she is every single day.”
It would be easy to attribute Bluder’s recent success to Clark. To a certain extent, that is true. But it also doesn’t tell the whole story.
While it’s a luxury to have a player like Clark, several challenges come with it. Clark has a gravitational pull of stardom — the heights of which are not common for college athletes. There are expectations plus negativity and other distractions off the court.
Bluder’s job is to help manage that. In an alternate universe, maybe Clark’s fame would’ve sent Iowa spiraling down the wrong path. But it hasn’t.
“As a coach, not only do you worry about their physical well-being, you worry about their mental, emotional well-being and definitely it’s something that we have to talk about and protect at all times,” Bluder said before this season. “Not just Cailtin, but our whole team. There’s a lot of pressure on the whole team, right?”
There was some skepticism surrounding Iowa entering this season. Yes, they returned Clark, Martin and Marshall from the team that got to the 2023 title game. But the Hawkeyes lost two starters from that squad — Monika Czinano and McKenna Warnock — and there were some serious questions about whether that production could be replaced.
Iowa has replaced it. Hannah Stuelke has made major strides from her freshman to sophomore seasons. Martin had had the most productive season of her career. Affolter has broken out into a featured role in the absence of injured Molly Davis.
“Everybody at the beginning of the year kept saying, ‘Oh, Iowa lost so much — they lost all this offense and two starters,’” Bluder said Monday. “Everybody kept focusing on that. And we kept focusing on what we had.”
There came a point when it became obvious this was so much bigger than a game.
It has been that way for a while. These players, this team, and this program, have become the transcendent faces of a movement that has inspired and empowered so many. Part of a changing narrative and the rise of women’s athletics, which continues to build momentum. That includes Bluder, who didn’t have such people to look up to growing up.
“You didn’t have the role models then,” Bluder said. “You didn’t know what the possibilities were. You didn’t know what you could achieve really.”
Before Monday, Bluder was asked what the 6-year-old version of herself would think of all this.
“Yeah,” Bluder said Sunday, couldn’t imagine it.”
But now, she doesn’t have to imagine it.
Follow Tyler Tachman on X @Tyler_T15 , contact via email at ttachman@gannett.com
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