IOWA CITY, Iowa — After sitting silent last year during the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament, Carver-Hawkeye Arena is sold out as second-seeded Iowa hosts the first and second rounds of Sacramento Regional 4.
The Hawkeyes will face No. 15 seed Fairleigh Dickinson at 3 p.m. Central time on Saturday. No. 7 seed Georgia will face No. 10 seed Virginia at 12:30 p.m. CT. Virginia defeated fellow No. 10 seed Arizona State 57-55 on Thursday in a First Four game.
All four first-round teams spoke to the media on Friday. Here are takeaways for each team.
Iowa
If you would have told head coach Jan Jensen last summer that her young team would be a second seed and hosting the tournament, she might have done a double-take.
“As we got a little deeper into the fall before games, I thought we had a shot, but I don’t think that any of us would [have said], ‘They’re so good. We’re going to get a two-seed and we’re going to host’ and all of that,” she told reporters Friday. “I think they’ve really worked.
“I think that as we got going in our locker room, I started to tell them, ‘Hey, look, we can be pretty good.’ As we got through the midpoint of that Big Ten season, I think they really started to understand that maybe this could be special.”
In her second year as head coach after being Lisa Bluder’s assistant at Iowa for 24 years, Jensen has assembled a 26-6 record with a team primarily made up of underclassmen.
Taylor Stremlow, a sophomore guard, has seen her role change greatly over the season. She joined the starting lineup after senior guard Taylor McCabe suffered a season-ending knee injury on Jan. 25 against Ohio State.
“There’s definitely been a lot of growth,” Stremlow told reporters on Friday. “I think Taylor was a great example that you never know what the day is going to hold, and so just enjoying the day and the game at hand is definitely what I’ve been trying to do.”
Sixth-year guard Kylie Feuerbach is one of just a few Hawkeyes who have experienced playing a home game in the NCAA Tournament.
“Oh, man, we have the best fans,” she told reporters Friday. “Every time — every home game we’ve had this season has been so cool because you can feel the energy that they bring. So to have extra games in Carver is really special. We do not take it for granted. It’s truly the best environment to be in.”
Feuerbach appreciates the growth Jensen has made in her second year at the helm.
“I think her role, the way that she came into the head coaching role could not have been any better,” Feuerbach said. “So it’s really hard to pinpoint specifics from the transition just because when she came in, she was already just phenomenal.
“I think one thing, though, is you learn things as a head coach. … But her confidence — that continues to go up. She handled it so gracefully, and it was just so easy to have that transition for me personally, being here before her as well.”
On Thursday, Jensen was named a semifinalist for the 2026 Werner Ladder Naismith Women’s College Coach of the Year award.
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Georgia
No. 24 Georgia (22-9, 8-8 SEC) isn’t intimidated by Carver-Hawkeye Arena and its reputation of being sold out with loud, rowdy fans.
“I don’t think any different,” sophomore forward Mia Woolfolk told reporters on Friday when asked how the team would approach the atmosphere. “We play in the SEC. We played South Carolina. We’ve had packed games before. LSU, our stadium was packed out. So I think we’ve been bred for this. I don’t think it’s going to be that big of a deal.”
Head coach Katie Abrahamson-Henderson also knows a thing or two about playing in Iowa City. The Cedar Rapids, Iowa, native transferred to Iowa to play for coach C. Vivian Stringer after starting her career at Georgia.
As a coach, her Bulldogs’ last appearance in the NCAA Tournament was in 2023 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Georgia took the Caitlin Clark-led Hawkeyes to the wire, falling 74-66 to the Iowa team that advanced to the national championship game.
“I think it’s a great environment,” she told reporters Friday about coming back to Iowa. “I think the Iowa fans, being an Iowan, we just love basketball, period. So I think that’s another reason why this will always be a place that the NCAA hosts.”
“I hope this is the last time we have to come back here,” she continued. “I think it’s more storylines than anything, and seeds and all those good things. I mean, obviously, my family’s super duper happy that I’m back here. But we’re not worried about the next game; we’re only worried about this game and playing a really good Virginia team.”
Georgia was sitting in the stands on Thursday night scouting the play-in game between Virginia and Arizona State. Abrahamson-Henderson took notes of what to focus on with Virginia.
“I took away the little things. The little things in that game really, really mattered and just paying attention to detail,” she said. “Both teams — every team in the NCAA Tournament — is good. I don’t care what seed you are. … Everybody’s fighting for one more day, one more chance.”
“Virginia specifically, the way they play is a little different,” she added. “They’ll play man [defense] and they’ll play their matchup zone. We’ve got to be prepared for both. And they’re pretty long. They rebound really, really well. So all the little things that we’ve been worrying about the last week are coming into play right now.”
Sophomore guard Dani Carnegie is also focused on the next game.
“Virginia is a great program and a great team,” she told reporters on Friday. “We see that they’re headed by Kymora Johnson, so we just know that they play at a very fast pace. They crash the boards really well, and they just do what they have to do in their zone and stuff to stop those teams from scoring.”
The last time the teams faced each other was Nov. 16, 2017, when Georgia defeated Virginia, 64-61.
Virginia
Kymora Johnson grew up just five minutes from the University of Virginia “Grounds” in Charlottesville and has always been a Cavaliers fan.
Now the junior guard is a key piece to Virginia’s turnaround. She led the Cavaliers in Thursday’s play-in game with 17 points, 10 rebounds and five assists, and she had a crucial 3-pointer with 30 seconds left to secure the win.
She told reporters on Friday what it meant for her to play — and excel — for her hometown team.
“I could walk to the ‘Grounds’ from the time that I could remember,” she said. “It’s really special, this team. Everyone’s bought into bringing Virginia back to its glory days. We’re just excited to be here, excited to keep playing [and] live to see the next day.”
After a losing skid in the late 2010s, Virginia’s record has consistently improved since Amaka Agugua-Hamilton became the head coach in 2022.
“Progress is a process. I tell them that all the time,” Agugua-Hamilton told reporters on Friday. “I wanted to build this program. … I knew it was going to be a big task given the state of the program when I got here. But I wanted to do it built on culture. I wanted to do it the right way. I wanted to get some young kids that could really leave their mark, leave a legacy here.”
“We talk about ‘Grind now, shine later,’ right? It’s about the work,” she added. “It’s about the little things that go into winning each day. And within the day, winning each practice, winning each drill, all the way down to the little things that carry over into winning games and to continue to win in March.”
This is the first NCAA Tournament appearance at Virginia for Agugua-Hamilton after taking Missouri State to two NCAA Tournaments, including a Sweet 16 trip in 2021. That experience helped her prepare for Virginia’s first NCAA Tournament win since 2018.
“Everything we did kind of translated to this,” Agugua-Hamilton said of her time at Missouri State.
She added, “My philosophy’s the same. … I want to defend at a high level, want to rebound, challenge shots at the rim, and then offensively play with pace and run our stuff. You tweak things based on your personnel every year, but my philosophy has been the same since the first day I was a head coach. It’s all about being confident.
“Right now, everybody’s talented. … But what’s the extra edge we’re going to bring to the table? Confidence is a big piece of that. Togetherness is a big piece of that. Synergy, camaraderie, all those things. So I want to make sure we’re clicking on all those levels with the intangible stuff and then understand the game plan and go out there and execute.”
Fairleigh Dickinson
Stephanie Gaitley’s very first game as Fairleigh Dickinson’s head coach was at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Nov. 6, 2023. The Hawkeyes dismantled the Knights, 102-46. While Gaitley admits she was a little starstruck then, she is ready for Saturday’s tournament game.
“It’s exciting to be back in Iowa. This is where I started my career with FDU, the first game,” she told reporters Friday. “I met Caitlin Clark in the hallway, got a picture taken with her. My sons were destroying me, like, ‘Mom, you can’t post a picture with the team and Caitlin Clark. Your team will kill you.’ I’m like, ‘I’m not going to post it, don’t worry.’ But that was an incredible experience, and at that point, that was a team that really hadn’t found its identity yet.”
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This season, FDU is 30-4 and enters the tournament on a 22-game winning streak. It advanced to the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year by winning the first back-to-back NEC championships in program history.
Gaitley expects Saturday’s game against Iowa to be different than in 2023, as her team is much more established.
“It’s different when you’re coming in to start your season as opposed to knowing what you just accomplished,” she said. “That year, when I took that team over … I got the job in late April. At that point, we had five players returning. So we were going to get in May by the time we got involved in recruiting. We were getting [transfers] that were still in the portal for two months and high school kids that weren’t being recruited. So I always say it was like, if anybody’s ever watched ‘Rudolph,’ it was like Misfit Island.”
“The difference now is you came with a deer-in-the-headlights [mindset] in that first game because it’s like all you knew was Caitlin Clark and the success of Iowa basketball,” she added. “And now … we’re coming in with a different mindset because of the success we’ve had.”
Their chances of defeating Iowa have also reportedly doubled since 2023.
“My husband was kidding me this morning,” Gaitley said. “He goes, ‘Listen, they had the predictors at 1% that game. You have [a] 2% chance of winning this game,’ So we’ve doubled our chances. I’m excited about that. … We’re young, and we’re looking forward to the opportunity.”
Sophomore guard Ava Renninger said the keys to the team’s success this season started in the offseason and off the court.
“I think it’s our team chemistry,” she told reporters on Friday. “We work on that in the offseason. And in the season, we’re always together and we love being with each other. I think that’s a big part of it.
“We also focus a lot on our defense and rebounding. I think if you’re not shooting well, that’s what it takes to win a game. And I think that’s our main focus point throughout the whole season. That’s what’s gotten us here.”
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