Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team is set to face Purdue at Mackey Arena in West Lafayette, Indiana, on Thursday, Feb. 19. The game will begin at 6 p.m. Central Time and will be broadcast on the Hawkeye Radio Network with Rob Brooks and Kathryn Reynolds providing commentary. Fans can also watch the matchup via B1G+ streaming.
The Hawkeyes have established themselves as a leading program in the Big Ten Conference. They were the first Big Ten team to play in back-to-back National Championships in 2023 and 2024. In the 2023-24 season, Iowa matched records for most wins in conference history with 34 victories, tying previous marks set by Purdue (1998-99) and Maryland (2014-15). Over the past six seasons, Iowa has consistently ranked among the top ten nationally for attendance.
The team has claimed four of the last seven Big Ten Tournament titles and has recorded nine consecutive seasons with at least 20 wins—the second-longest such streak in program history. Since November 2016, Iowa holds a home record of 139-21 and has gone 104-33 against Big Ten opponents since the start of the 2019-20 season.
Iowa’s recent success includes having six players drafted into the WNBA since 2019: Kathleen Doyle, Megan Gustafson, Monika Czinano, Caitlin Clark, Kate Martin, and Lucy Olsen. The program has produced a First Team All-Big Ten honoree every year since 2017.
Jan Jensen became Iowa’s sixth head coach on May 13, 2024. She is noted as “the first coach in Iowa women’s basketball history to record [more than] 20 wins in their first two seasons.” Jensen also surpassed Lisa Bluder for “the second most wins by a head coach in their first season at the University of Iowa,” reaching a total of 23 victories. Her current record stands at 43-16 overall with a conference mark of 21-11.
Over the last quarter-century, Iowa has made postseason appearances in all but two years—receiving bids to either the NCAA Tournament or WNIT twenty-three times. The current roster features nine freshmen and sophomores—the largest group of underclassmen since the 2012-13 season—and they are coming off a stretch where they won nineteen out of their last twenty-four regular-season conference games.
The upcoming contest continues a tightly contested rivalry between Iowa and Purdue; both teams have each won forty games across their series history. However, Iowa currently holds an advantage after winning their last nine meetings against Purdue.
Purdue enters Thursday’s game with an overall record of twelve wins and thirteen losses (4-10 in Big Ten play), following a recent victory over Rutgers by a score of seventy-two to fifty-seven. Five of Purdue’s twelve wins this season have come at home. According to NET Rankings—a tool used for evaluating team performance—Purdue sits at seventieth nationally but remains winless against Quad One opponents this year.
