Lisa Bluder woke up this morning with a raspy voice, but she says she will be ready to call out plays on Friday evening in the NCAA Final Four game against UCONN. The Iowa head coach spoke to the media in Cleveland on Thursday to preview the game against the Huskies and the lessons that she learned from the experience last year and trying to limit time out and about leading up to the game. Bluder also talks about Caitlin Clark and going up against Paige Bueckers.
Q. What I asked Caitlin about what she wants to see the game, the continued growth after she leaves. What do you want to see? Do you have fears that — you guys have 12.3 million the other night — do you worry if those numbers go down that people will look at that negatively or make a negative judgment about that next year?
COACH BLUDER: I mean, excuse me, my voice is gone. I don’t know why. I woke up this way. I apologize.
I mean, I don’t know if we can sustain the numbers we had last Monday night for a whole season. We’re at the climax right now. We’re at the end of the season. Everybody’s watching us right now. I think that’s pretty special.
But I do not think that our game is going to go down. I think there’s two much great young talent. I think there’s unbelievable coaches at this level. And I think the world has caught on to what they’ve been missing.
I think our game has been really for a long time and I think people have just missed the boat on it. Now we’ve finally had the exposure and people have understood, wow, I haven’t watched women’s basketball for a long time, I’ve missed something. And I don’t think they’re going to want to miss anymore.
Q. QUESTION; I wondered, are you and Jan going to wear matching outfits again? It was a winning strategy last year?
COACH BLUDER: We better check. I don’t know. I don’t know what she’s got planned.
Q. QUESTION; what I really wanted to know is Caitlin’s point about playing with a lot of joy. It occurs to me, watching the entire women’s tournament this year, that is a word that you can associate with a lot of players. And I wondered, do you think that any of that joy is them being excited that finally so many people are paying attention to this game and people are seeing their talent and their passion and it’s just all coming out? It seems, not to take anything away from the men, different from the men’s game?
COACH BLUDER: I don’t know if it’s now that they realize that people are paying attention because, honestly, when you’re playing the game you don’t know that; you are just in the moment.
A lot of people wrote to me after last year and said, man, your team played with such joy. They gave us joy. They gave us hope, getting through a tough situation. I got hundreds, hundreds of emails and text messages about that.
So I do think it’s something our team has always played with and maybe people are just noticing it now.
I’ve always wanted our team to play like that. Like, this is a game. Let’s have fun. Let’s play for each other. And, so, I don’t know if it’s now because of the media. I feel like we’ve always played that way.
Q. With the sold-out crowds you have everywhere, I’m curious as a coach, you talk losing your voice, how do you get play calls to your team knowing there’s 17,000 screaming fans? Is it hand signals? How do you make sure they run what you want them to run?
COACH BLUDER: I actually have a really good coach’s voice just not today. I’m really very loud in calling those plays out. But I do have hand signals too. And through time, sometimes they kind of know what you want them to do at this point of the season. But I definitely use hand signals too.
Q. I asked Caitlin, what did you learn last year in Final Four as a coach — okay, this worked, this didn’t — as far as all the outside stuff going on, to get your team ready to play tomorrow?
COACH BLUDER: I think that’s one mistake I made between the two games last year that I’ve learned going into this year is there are so many other distractions. And you have to protect your emotional energy.
And it’s really hard to do when all these people around you, whether it’s parents or people asking you for tickets or this media obligation or that. You can be exhausted by the time the game tips. Especially when you’re talking about tomorrow being a 9:30 tip. I mean, right? A lot of us are usually in bed by then. So it’s really hard.
So I’m really cautioning them on that. I’m talking about it more. You’ve got to protect yourself. You’ve got to figure out ways to invest in your emotional energy, whatever it is for you.
But I’m not having the team be required to go to so many offsite activities as I did last year.
Q. You’ve been with Jan and Jenni for so long. What has it been like to experience the last two years kind of as a trio? And what does it do for you as a coaching staff to have that core and know each other so well?
COACH BLUDER: I think it’s made it more special to share it with these guys just because we’ve been through so much together. One year my husband and I were celebrating our anniversary and Dave walks down the office hallway carrying a bunch of flowers. And Jenni yells out, hey, I’ve been with you 25 years, where are mine?
It’s true, we’re like a family. And it makes it so much easier to go through the bad times when you have people that you really care about. But it makes it that much more gratifying when you get to go have these good times together.
Q. I’m curious, as you mentioned you don’t want this to be Paige versus Caitlin, but when you look at UConn, Nika does so much for them. When she stays out of foul trouble it seems that it helps Paige so much. When you watch them, how do you see how much she can dictate what they do?
COACH BLUDER: She’s such a great point guard and she plays so hard defensively, and I think she’ll be guarding Caitlin. She uses her size. She’s such a smart basketball player. It does kind of relieve Paige of some of those duties, in my estimation.
But it’s like she doesn’t really have to force things or create things. She kind of is doing what is there and available for her.
I think Gabbie Marshall does that for us, plays extremely hard defensively. Doesn’t have to make points to be validated, but we’ll take them if they’re there.
Q. This UConn team likes to play up-tempo. Iowa likes to play up-tempo. How will you look to control the pace of play?
COACH BLUDER: I think both teams feel like they’re ready to go. I mean, at this point in the year, we both played a certain pace, a certain style all year long. And I don’t think now is the time to really adjust what you do. You just go out and do what you do.
And so we like to play fast, and we’ll try to do that again tomorrow night.
Q. You’ve spoken recently about how Caitlin has really complimented her teammates and you really think it helps boost their confidence. Have you seen more of that from her this run compared to last year and how did the teammates react this year versus last year?
COACH BLUDER: I think she’s learned that, through her Iowa journey, on how to be a great leader and a great leader builds up people around them.
I don’t think she knew how to do that when she first came to Iowa because maybe, you know, she wasn’t around as good of people. But then she learned, oh, these people are pretty good.
And so now she’s learned how she can use her voice to give other people that ability to play freely. I think she’s really learned that through her journey at Iowa.
Q. In the past, in women’s basketball, we might not have seen the mass exodus of journalists that we saw when players walked out the door because the coaches were such the dominant figures. And a lot of them still are, obviously, but in this particular moment, the game is very player-centric in terms of the spotlight. I wonder what you make of that.
COACH BLUDER: I think that’s the way it should be. I mean, they’re the ones out there doing the hard work. They’re the ones out there with the — trying to be mentally focused and doing unbelievable things.
When I look at Caitlin and what she does, I mean, it’s absolutely amazing, as we all know. Her shots. Her passing. Her ability to elevate at the highest level on the biggest stage, those are the people we should be paying attention to.
Q. You and Caitlin mentioned this moment that the game is having could have happened a while ago; the quality has always been there, maybe the exposure wasn’t. Curious as somebody who has been in the game a long time, how have you seen the coverage of this game evolve and how important is that?
COACH BLUDER: Extremely important. I think we have had — I think people should have been talking about women’s basketball for a long time now. And they finally are. And maybe it just took some superstars like Paige and Angel and Caitlin in order for everybody else to understand how good our game was.
I think they should have been talking about it for a long time. So I think the media exposure has helped our game tremendously.
And I’m glad — hey, I come from the Big Ten, and we were one of the first to have a national network. And I think that kicked everybody else off into doing it as well, all the other Power Five conferences. So I credit the Big Ten for kind of making that first initiation with the network right away.
Q. I’m just curious, we know how it is now. Like, what were we missing in the coverage before? What would this room have looked like, I don’t know, 20 years ago?
COACH BLUDER: I wasn’t here 20 years ago. So I’m not really sure. But obviously the media attention has grown. The viewership has grown, as it should have been. I don’t really know how to answer that question because I wasn’t here.
Q. I know you don’t want it to be about Caitlin and Paige. I’m curious, in watching the tape on Paige, you saw her earlier in her career, where she is now and everything she’s gone through to get to this point. Where do you feel like she’s grown the most as a player, and then how do you try and defend that?
COACH BLUDER: You know, I’ve seen Paige play since high school. So, I mean, she’s a Minnesota girl. I went up to her open gyms and such. So I know her. She doesn’t know me but I know her, obviously, and her game.
What’s always impressed me is her ability to stop on a dime and elevate with her shot, and she’s already got such great size, but I would say, like Caitlin, she’s grown in her team aspect. You know, just having really good players around them and relying on those other really great players and not having to do everything yourself.
Like, she had a good high school team, right, but now she’s got great players all around her. So she’s been able to incorporate — the last five games she’s averaging almost five assists a game. So she’s giving up the ball as well as her scoring has increased. I think just her ability to play alongside other people is what probably has changed the most.
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