Iowa ladies’s basketball will look very completely different subsequent season, and never simply because Caitlin Clark gained’t be donning a Hawkeyes jersey.
Head coach Lisa Bluder is retiring after 24 years as the pinnacle coach of the ladies’s workforce in a shocking improvement on Monday afternoon.
Longtime affiliate coach Jan Jensen has been named the brand new head coach by the college.
Bluder, 63, helped develop Iowa’s ladies’s basketball program throughout her time on the helm, which included back-to-back appearances within the nationwide championship sport.
In a letter to Hawkeyes followers, Bluder stated that she had been considering her future after the season had come to an finish and that after spending time along with her husband, “it became clear to me that I am ready to step aside.”
“There is never an ideal time to retire and I am sure this fall that I will miss the games, the practices, the road trips, the atmosphere, the tremendous fans and, most importantly, the players,” Bluder wrote in her letter to followers. “But my belief in the foundation of this program, knowing that success is now an unrelenting component of women’s basketball at the University of Iowa gives me comfort as I transition to become the program’s biggest champion.”
Bluder expressed hope to nonetheless be an “asset” for the basketball program and athletics division in retirement.
Bluder has amassed a powerful résumé throughout her time at Iowa, which started in 2000, and her 884 profession wins are the tenth most in NCAA ladies’s basketball historical past.
She can be the all-time winningest coach in Huge Ten historical past, whereas serving to to steer Iowa to 22 postseason appearances — 18 NCAA match appearances and 4 WNIT — and capturing 5 Huge Ten Match titles.
Bluder additionally coached ladies’s basketball’s largest title in Clark for 4 seasons earlier than the phenom was drafted first total by the Fever on this 12 months’s WNBA draft.
Her teaching profession started as the pinnacle coach of St. Ambrose College from 1985-1990, and she or he then spent 10 years as the pinnacle coach at Drake earlier than taking up at Iowa.
