Iowa Women’s Basketball Coach Lisa Bluder’s Final Message To Fans Was A Plea For Support

Lisa Bluder announced her decision to retire from coaching women’s college basketball on Monday after 24 years at Iowa. She will be replaced by her longtime assistant, Jan Jensen.

It marks a new era of Hawkeyes basketball.

Not only is Bluder riding off into the sunset, Caitlin Clark has graduated and moved on.

Two of the biggest personalities in the sport are leaving the program at the same time. Change is underway!

Bluder, who took over at Iowa in 2024, won two Big Ten regular season titles and five Big Ten tournaments during her tenure. She went 533-254 in total, which makes her the winningest coach in conference history. The Hawkeyes only missed the NCAA Tournament five times and reached the national championship in each of the last two years.

As a result of her leadership, Bluder was named the Big Ten Coach of the Year in 2001, 2008 and 2010, and the Naismith College Coach of the Year in 2019. It was an extremely impressive run that came just two games short of two rings.

Bluder, with a lot of help from Clark, changed the landscape of the sport over the last two years.

Fans packed into Carver-Hawkeye Arena and sold out every home game. Iowa also played the most-attended women’s college basketball game of all-time at the football stadium back in October.

Next year will be completely different.

Bluder is gone. Clark is gone. Kate Martin, Gabbie Marshall and Molly Davis are gone.

The team’s end-of-season celebration on April 10 marked the last time that they were all together. Bluder’s final message to the fans was a plea for continued support. It may have been her way at hinting at retirement, but it was largely focused around the lack of Clark.