Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes helped grow the sport of women’s college basketball this past season in a pretty substantial way thanks to all the team was able to achieve throughout the 2023-24 season. And now that Clark is off to the WNBA, Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder is departing from the program as well.
On Monday, Bluder shared a statement via the Iowa Hawkeyes team website to announce her retirement after 24 years with the program.
“It is with a range of emotions that I share with you today that I have decided to step down from leading the Iowa women’s basketball team after 24 memorable years,” wrote Bluder. “I informed President Wilson and Director of Athletics Beth Goetz of my decision and I am grateful for their unwavering support and offered them my assistance in any manner in the future.”
Bluder has risen to prominence as of late thanks to Iowa’s combination of success and overall popularity that transcended just women’s sports this past season.
However, Bluder has actually been around in the college basketball coaching ranks for quite some time.
Bluder’s coaching career dates all the way back to 1984 at St. Ambrose College in Iowa. She spent six seasons at the school before accepting the head coaching gig for the Drake Bulldogs. After ten years at Drake, she finally accepted the head coaching job at Iowa in 2000, where she has been for the last 24 years.
Now that it is all said and done for Bluder in terms of her coaching career, it’s certainly fair to say that she perhaps had one of the more underrated careers of any head coach in recent memory.
She ranks quite high in terms of overall coaching wins in the history of women’s college basketball, as her 884 career wins rank as the 11th most of any women’s college basketball coach in the history of the sport.
