Bohnenkamp: Happy Hawkeye Homecoming

The Caitlin Clark-Led Iowa Women's Basketball Experience Gets Des Moines Date

If this is Caitlin Clark’s last season at Iowa, she’ll get a final game in her hometown.

Iowa’s athletic department announced on Wednesday that Clark and the women’s basketball team would be part of a doubleheader at Des Moines’ Wells Fargo Arena on December 16.

The women’s team will play Cleveland State, a program that won 30 games and reached the NCAA tournament last season, while the men will play Florida A&M.

It didn’t take long after the morning announcement for social media to light up with the usual-but-well-past-becoming-tiresome argument of why Iowa’s men’s team doesn’t play Northern Iowa or Drake, like the Hawkeyes usually did in mid-December during the days of the Big Four Classic*, or why the women’s team wasn’t playing an opponent with bigger name recognition to capitalize on the run to the national championship game last season and the way-too-early No. 3 ranking for next season.

*-For the record, in my 30 seasons of covering college basketball I enjoyed the home-and-homes that Iowa and Iowa State played with UNI and Drake, and I thought the Big Four Classic that followed got a bad rap from some in the state’s media who didn’t like it. I’m still wondering why this is always an Iowa problem, considering Iowa State doesn’t have UNI and Drake on the schedule either, but that’s a discussion for another day. (I know the answer, it’s just … well, another day).

The reality of this event is to take both teams of Hawkeyes to a different place in the state, and right now it’s the perfect chance to capitalize on the energy created by the Final Four run of the Iowa women.

The Hawkeyes won’t quite look the same as last season — center Monika Czinano and forward McKenna Warnock, big pieces of the starting lineup, are gone — but this is still an excellent basketball team with Clark, the reigning national player of the year, running the show.

The Hawkeyes are a hot ticket — season ticket sales for next season were halted a few weeks ago — and taking them to a venue in the central part of the state will give fans that might not be able to get into Carver-Hawkeye Arena a chance to see them play.

Clark, who will be a senior, grew up in West Des Moines, and has already played in Des Moines twice when the Hawkeyes played at Drake in the 2020-21 season and last season. The first appearance, though, was played during the season when attendance was limited to just family because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while last season’s game was played in front of a sellout crowd, it was Drake’s home court.

This will be something different — Wells Fargo Arena is a 16,000-seat venue in downtown Des Moines, and you figure every one of those seats will be filled.

Clark has indicated that she might take her extra season granted by the NCAA during the pandemic, but if she doesn’t, this will be her last year, so why not get one more chance to play in her hometown?

It’s a scheduling decision that makes good sense financially, even with an opponent that might not draw as much attention as a bigger name.

There aren’t many open spots remaining on Iowa’s nonconference schedule, but the Hawkeyes still have time to add a big name or two to a schedule that will include 18 Big Ten games, a home game with Drake, road games with Iowa State and UNI (yes, they play the in-state games, but again … an argument for another day) and the Gulf Coast Showcase tournament that includes North Carolina and Kansas State.

Iowa coach Lisa Bluder’s top concerns right now are replacing the production and presence of Czinano and Warnock, knowing that the rest of the team’s goals — winning the Big Ten regular-season and tournament titles, getting to the NCAA tournament, then getting to the Final Four — can’t be attained without first solving those concerns. The schedule will be built with that in mind.

As for the men’s game, it’s hard to see Florida A&M, which went 7-22, giving the Hawkeyes much of a challenge. But it’s a chance to play on a neutral court, and a chance to play in front of fans that, again, might not make it to Iowa City for a game. It’s not going to move the interest needle as much as the women’s game, but that’s not the point.

The Des Moines doubleheader is a creative move at a time when college basketball schedules should become more imaginative to capture a November/December audience that tends to be apathetic.

And if it is a final season of getting to catch the Clark show, it figures to be a hot ticket.