Iowa womens basketball coach Lisa Bluder is hopeful that Jamie printy will be ready for the start of next season. The junior suffered a season ending knee injury last week in a victory at Wisconsin. Bluder says Printy’s surgery went well and she is on the road to recovery.

The Hawkeyes will be at home for two games this week beginning with Thursday’s matchup against Minnesota. She says the Gopher’s record is deceiving as one of the wins is against Ohio State.

Iowa will also host Michigan State on Sunday and with a 6-5 Big Ten record and 14-10 overall mark this week gives the Hawks a chance to boost their post-season hopes.

Iowa’s Aaron White has been named the Big Ten’s co-freshman of the week. The six-eight forward averaged 13 points and eight rebounds in victories over Minnesota and Penn State.

Iowa coach Fran McCaffery says White’s line of 17 points, 9 rebounds and 4 assists showed the many ways he can impact the game. McCaffery says White is shooting the ball well from the outside and he can also take it in and dunk it, and that is good to have.

White runs the floor well for a big guy and it has led to several easy layups, and McCaffery says that’s because he has developed his stamina to be able to run. He says if you don’t have the stamina to run all the time, you are only going to get a couple of those easy lay ups before the other team gets back and stops you.

Iowa returns to action on Thursday at Northwestern.

The Iowa Hawkeye women outscored Indiana 48-33 in the second half to roar away to an 83-64 victory on the road in Big Ten play on Sunday. Kamille Wahlin had 22 points and six assists while Mellisa Dixon had five three pointers and finished with 19 points.

It was Iowa’s first game without standout guard Jamie Printy, who is out for the remainder of the season with a knee injury.

Iowa coach Lisa Bluder says she was “very, very excited bout the way we played today.” She says it was tough to prepare without Printy and it will take a complete team effort to replace her.

Bluder says it will have to be a combined effort to replace Printy and pick up the slack. Iowa is 6-5 in the Big Ten and 14-10 overall.

The Iowa Hawkeyes downed Minnesota 63-59 in Iowa City last night. The Hawkeyes went on a 9-0 run to end the game and seal the win over the Gophers. Iowa coach Fran McCaffery was upset with his team’s defense after they gave up 103 points against Indiana, but says the effort was much better against the Gophers.

“It’s a 40 minute game and you can’t play any better defense than what we played in the first 10 minutes of that game, and that’s I think what made me the most proud of this team,” McCaffery says.

McCaffery questioned his team’s toughness to play defense in the Big Ten after the Indiana loss. “They have it in them, we have been tough, we just haven’t been consistently tough game in and game out, and that’s I think what always frustrates a coaching staff,” McCaffery says.

He says the way the team came out to play, you knew they remembered the poor performance they had Sunday.

Matt Gatens led Iowa with 18 points, and Roy Devyn Marble had 12 points.

Iowa is now 12-11 on the season and 4-7 in the Big Ten.

Iowa gave up 103 points in its loss to Indiana on Sunday and coach Fran McCaffery says they continue to try and find a way to shore up the defense.

“I’m not happy at all with how we’re playing, we’ve got to get better at the defensive end of the floor. We shuffled the lineup a little bit to see if that would help. I think it helped in some areas, maybe not so much in others, so I think we have a couple of important days of practice coming up,” McCaffery says.

McCaffery says you can only do so much work in practice on defense, working on all kinds of drills and trying different combinations. “But ultimately it comes down to a matter of toughness, and we lack that right now, I don’t mind saying it, we don’t have the toughness that’s necessary to defend in this league,” McCaffery says.

Iowa did score score 89 points in the game. McCaffery was asked if he’d thought about giving up the fast-paced offense.

“No, nothing’s changed my mind. I don’t mind being in a 103-89 game, I just don’t want to have 89,” McCaffery said.

Iowa is now 11-11 overall on the season, and 3-6 in the Big Ten conference. Iowa hosts Minnesota on Wednesday.