Hear from Iowa women’s basketball coach Jan Jensen after Hawkeyes learn their NCAA Tournament path!

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What Kim Caldwell said about Iowa coach Jan Jensen’s mic’d up comments about Lady Vols

Jan Jensen leaned into a narrative about SEC teams that has become more and more prevalent when the Iowa basketball coach tried to motivate the Hawkeyes.

Jensen was mic’d up on the FOX broadcast Saturday, which showed a clip of an Iowa huddle in the first quarter against the Lady Vols. The game was tied up 10-10 at the first media timeout, and Jensen had a message for her team.

“You’re better than they are,” Jensen said. “They’re a little taller, they might be a little faster, overall they might jump a little higher, but they’re not better basketball players.”

Tennessee won 78-68 at Barclays Center, ending the game with a 14-2 run over the last 4:38 when Iowa didn’t hit a single field goal. The Hawkeyes went 2-for-4 from the free throw line for their only points during the Lady Vols’ dominant run to close out the win.

The narrative that teams in the SEC are just more athletic and quicker isn’t new. It’s one that teams like South Carolina, Ole Miss and LSU have been hearing often.

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Lady Vols coach Kim Caldwell didn’t take the comments personally when she was asked for reporters Tuesday.

“Well, I love athletes, and it’d be very hard to play this way if you didn’t have them,” Caldwell said. “But everyone’s going to do what they need to do as a coach to motivate their team. I like to motivate my team by yelling at them and being negative, but everyone’s different, so I think that’s all that was.”

Jensen repeated similar sentiments in her postgame press conference after the loss, however, when talking about how tough Tennessee’s style of play is to go up against with its constant full-court pressure.

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“This isn’t any surprise, I mean, no disrespect to anybody we’ve played, but Tennessee is an SEC team with tremendous athletes,” Jensen said. “I think it was one that we could have had a shot, had we played like I’ve seen us play … I’m not saying we would have won, but I think it’s just hard to feel good about it when you have that many turnovers.”

Cora Hall covers University of Tennessee women’s athletics. Email her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @corahalll. If you enjoy Cora’s coverage, consider a digital subscription that allows you to access all of it.