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It’s been almost two years since Caitlin Clark played her last game for the Iowa Hawkeyes. She did return for a WNBA preseason game, though. While the program hasn’t been able to find another star of her caliber, the roster still features some good talent. This season, Ava Heiden, Hannah Stuelke, and Chit-Chat Wright lead the team in most statistical categories.
The latter, head coach Jan Jensen thinks, also holds the keys to opening up the Hawkeyes’ offense.
“The beauty of Chit-Chat and the hard thing is she’s such a pass-first point guard and she loves to defer,” Jensen said after her team’s win over Penn State. “If there’s a play that has three options and they’re all for her, she’ll choose every other option before one of those three. It’s a unique battle, and so, I’ve been really working with her and challenged our staff…You see, when she gets going, it really opens everybody else up.”
Wright couldn’t miss in the first quarter
Wright finished the game against Penn State with 16 points, 3 rebounds, and 6 assists. 12 of those points came in the first quarter. Wright converted two threes, two two-point shots, and two free throws in the first quarter, not missing a single one of her shot attempts. Her scoring burst helped the Hawkeyes secure a quick lead.
She cooled down after the first quarter, and other players took over offensively. Nevertheless, Wright finished with double-digit points for the sixth time this season—a mark she only cracked ten times in all of her 33 games in her freshman season at Georgia Tech.
The Hawkeyes have tough games coming up
The Hawkeyes have only played three ranked opponents so far: Baylor, Iowa State, and UConn. They beat Baylor but lost to the other two. The new year will bring several tough opponents with Nebraska, Michigan State, Maryland, Ohio State, USC, UCLA, and Michigan.
Iowa will need everyone to play their best to avoid losing a bunch of games against some of the better teams in the country. Wright is a big part of that. She will have to set up the offense, make plays for her teammates, contribute on defense, and be a scoring threat.
Considering Jensen’s focus on turning Wright into more of a scoring threat, fans should expect that focus to define her next three months of basketball. Some of the teams the Hawkeyes will have to face soon are some of the top scoring offenses in the country. Michigan, Michigan State, and Nebraska all rank in the top ten in points per game. Maryland is eleventh, UCLA thirteenth, and Ohio State fifteenth. Iowa currently sits at number 18 with 83.5 points per game and could use a boost.
