3 Takeaways from Iowa’s season-ending loss to Virginia: Hawkeyes’ youth became their undoing

The No. 2 seed Hawkeyes fell to No. 10 Virginia 83-75 in double overtime on Monday, ending a promising second season under head coach Jan Jensen in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Iowa went 27-7 overall and 15-3 in Big Ten play with an appearance in the 2026 Big Ten Tournament Championship.

A season defined by the Hawkeyes’ youth met a disappointing end due to the team’s own inexperience and bench, which dwindled throughout the year.

The Aftermath

The Iowa locker room made for a somber scene as the players worked through the emotion of finality. Eyes red and still wet, they put on a grave face and showed a different kind of toughness than the scrappiness the team became known in the four months prior as they fielded questions from the gathered media. Each player attacked the disappointment and the moment differently.

Fighting back tears, senior guard Kylie Feuerbach reflected on her decision to transfer to Iowa after one year at Iowa State.

“It’s hard,” Feuerbach said. “… I’ve loved every second here. Luckily, I’ve gotten more time here than the normal person with my extra year. So, it’s been awesome.

“… Could not ask for a better place to play at, better people to play with.”

The moment still — by choice — eluded senior forward Hannah Stuelke.

“I’m just trying to wait until I get some time to think about it and process it and pray about it,” Stuelke said.

And, sophomore guard Taylor Stremlow leaned into advice from her mom Sarah, a former women’s college basketball player at Butler.

“This year, it’s been really good,” Taylor said. “My mom says college basketball is the hardest thing you’ll ever do, but it’s the most rewarding. That 100% holds true, especially this season for me. It’s been really rewarding. I love this group. It was just a great year, but definitely challenging. Moments like this, you got to have for the really fun moments.

“… It’s tough. Everybody gets pretty emotional looking back on all of their years here and what they’ve achieved.”

For Jensen, the moments following the loss force her to balance the program’s future with the program’s outgoing stars.

“There's a lot of different emotions, from disappointment or frustration to sentimentality,” Jensen said. “So you're managing a lot as a coach. You know that last game, I think too, you got to be careful. You want to set a little tone about what do we got to do in the future? But you need to spend a lot more of it on celebrating the seniors, because they've meant so much to us.”

Poorly-timed shooting slump

If anything characterized Iowa’s final three games, it was the Hawkeyes’ sudden shooting woes, which explained the 1-2 ending to the season and near-upset loss to Fairleigh Dickinson on Saturday.

Iowa, which shot 36.8% from three-point range over the first 31 games of the season, shot just 11-of-65 (16.9%) in the final three contests of the season.

From the free-throw line, the Hawkeyes shot 31-of-53 (58.5%) over the final three games of the year after shooting 69% through the first 31 games.

The slump was not a result of a lack of work, practice or effort.

“We have to make shots,” Stremlow said. “That’s basketball, it’s what we’re here for. That’s why we practice so much. It just really sucks that they weren’t falling today.

“… It’s super frustrating when you work so hard on shooting. And, I know everybody on our team works a lot, puts in a lot of hours, so it’s just hard not to see that come to fruition.”

Nor was it a product of poor looks either.

“They’re good looks,” Jensen said. “… Our mindset just wasn’t — sometimes you got to see one go in, but sometimes if you start succumbing to that, then if it doesn’t go in, it doesn’t go in, it doesn’t go in, then all of a sudden you’re not in control anymore. I just got to kind of analyze and see what’s going on in their heads.”

Hawkeyes’ youth became their undoing

From the outset of the 2025-26 season, Jensen highlighted her team’s youth.

‘We’re the youngest we’ve been since 2012,” Jensen said during her opening statement on media in October. “…  At the end of the day, those freshmen are still freshmen no matter how highly decorated they are, and the portal transfers are great, but everybody is still learning a new system. So when I thought about this, it's so exciting, and it's fun because we have a lot of different ways we can go.”

She preached patience for her young squad. New roles for the veterans and the learning curve of the jump from high school basketball to college basketball required it.

But, then, the Hawkeyes won 27 games, finished as the No. 2 team in the Big Ten, earned themselves a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament and the right to host the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament in Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

The success meant patience went out the door. But, on Monday’s loss, proved why it was needed. No matter how decorated Iowa became, it was still the youngest team the program put on the floor in more than a decade. Injuries to senior guard Taylor McCabe and senior forward Jada Gyamfi did not help in that regard either.

“Two or three times, we didn’t know the shot clock,” Jensen said. “… I’m not faulting them, but I just think that basketball IQ, that savvy, it’s really hard. … That was the youth, and that’s on me. ... It was just so much hesitancy. That was the youth.”

Now, the challenge for Jensen and those returning to the program next year is to make sure today’s disappointment is simply a growing pain — like it was for a 2022 No. 2 seed Iowa that lost in the round-of-32. Things turned out all right for those Hawkeyes.

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