The Iowa Hawkeye women opened the Big Ten race by rolling to a 77-52 win over Penn State in Iowa City. Melissa Dixon led the Hawks with 21 points and Bethany Doolittle added 12 points and 11 rebounds. “I though our first half was really good, that second half we really couldn’t get the energy, there was really no flow to the game…we had some adversity this week with some flu, we never had a practice leading up to this with everybody involved,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder says. Despite the lack of full practices, she says they were able to do a lot of good things.

The Hawkeyes took advantage of 24 Penn State turnovers, and while rebounding has been a weak spot for the Hawkeyes, Bluder feels they made progress in that area. She says they did a better job of crashing the boards, and although they lost the rebound total by 2, she says they effort was “much, much better than I’ve seen so far.”

Iowa is 10-2 overall and is off until a Sunday visit to Rutgers. Bluder says they beat Rutgers the last time they played them on a neutral court and she says they will have a week to prepare for their press this time before going on the road.