Women’s Basketball: Iowa’s season ends in heartbreaking fashion to Virginia in OT

The Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team and staff wave to fans as they walk off the court following a double overtime loss to against the Virginia Cavaliers March 23, 2026 during a Round of 32 NCAA March Madness game at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City, Iowa. | Julia Hansen/Iowa City Press-Citizen / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images For the second game in a row, Virginia guard Kymora Johnson scored 28 points as she led her No. 10 seed Virginia Cavaliers to victory over the No.

2 seed Iowa Hawkeyes in a 83-75 win in Carver-Hawkeye Arena. It’s a gut wrenching loss in many ways for the Hawkeyes, who end the season with a 27-7 record, but also not unexpected. Something seemed to break in the team’s brutal loss to UCLA in the Big Ten championship game.

Granted, there were only two games, but in neither of them did the Hawkeyes look like the team that had exceeded expectations all the way to a second place finish in a loaded Big Ten conference. The offense, particularly from the guards, was almost nonexistent. In a game where much was said and written about the needed performance from Chit-Chat Wright, the sophomore guard both delivered, to the tune of 21 points, and lost the game for Iowa, between a disjointed final play in regulation that rimmed out, and missing free throws in overtime that would have iced the game.

The team shot terribly from beyond the arc for the second consecutive game, shooting a measly 17% on 5-29 3-pointers. As it had many other times in the season, that left things to Ava Heiden and Hannah Stuelke in the post, who delivered. Heiden ended a breakout sophomore campaign with a 26 point, 6 rebound outing, but only hit 11-22 shot attempts.