‘I am so thankful’: Lisa Bluder breaks down NCAA tourney run, national championship loss to LSU

Yeah, that’s—I’m sorry. That’s what our whole team is about. They’re role models. They relish in it, and not just for young kids either.

This team has brightened the lives of so many people of all ages. Yeah, of course I’m happy I get to coach Caitlin another year, maybe two.

I can’t comment on the officials. It’s very frustrating because I feel like I can’t talk to them. They won’t even listen. That’s what’s frustrating is there wasn’t even a conversation that could be had.

When your two seniors have to sit on the bench…they don’t know they’re seniors, I get it. But those two women didn’t deserve it. I don’t think so. And then Caitlin getting a T. I don’t know. It’s too bad. Yeah, it’s too bad.

Just gratitude. I am so thankful. I mean, Hawk fans that came here, traveled from all over. I look up, and I see my family up there. I have the best family. I am so blessed.

I don’t know why I’m upset about this. I shouldn’t be. I’m sorry. I honestly have such gratitude. I love to do it. People that really make a difference in people’s lives, and I get the best family in the whole world. I’m just so thankful.

I’m sorry. I’m going to try to get it out here. I’m just proud of them. I just told them that, for them, don’t remember this. Remember that they played in a national championship game. Remember that they made it to the Final Four. And I asked them at the beginning of the year if they would have been happy playing in the National Championship Game, all of them would have. I just told them there’s nobody else I’d want to coach except for them.

I don’t know if I can remember. The one that I called when they went up 14 or whatever? Just keep believing. Stop, score, stop.

We went through switching one through four, small screens, just a little bit of a change. Focus on what we can control and not on what we can’t control. There’s a lot of things out there we couldn’t control, and I just didn’t want my team getting wrapped up in it.

I think at times we did, though. We didn’t succeed 100 percent in that. I probably didn’t succeed 100 percent in that. But we’ll learn.

And their defense too. They work so hard defensively. I understand we gave up a lot of points. I know that. But we weren’t expecting banked-in threes and those type of things that really can hurt your momentum.

Again, those two women are such amazing people. Kate is 3-for-4 from the three-point line. We have four people in double figures, almost five. Gabbie, she’s been shooting like that for such a long time after a slow start to the year, and I’m so proud of her for continuing to believe that she could do it and would do it and she did it.

There’s just so many people on this team. I mean, they’re great kids.

I’m sure she was really proud of her accomplishment. And I would be really proud of my accomplishment if I made it, won the national championship, too.

We’re all different people, and we all have different ways to show our emotions. Again, I’ve got to focus on what I can control.

If people are excited about women’s basketball because of Iowa, I am so thrilled with that. I do believe—and even though we didn’t play it all the time tonight—I do think we play with a joy, we play with teamwork.

It’s so fun to be able to be part of this game at this point. As you all know, when I started playing, it wasn’t like this at all. It wasn’t like this even 15 years ago. You know what, it’s just great to see people realizing the power of women athletes and people respecting women athletes. It wasn’t like that when I was growing up. Kind of looked down on for being an athlete.

Now these women are strong, they’re leaders. And for people to recognize that and want to support them—businesses, corporations wanting to support them—it’s wonderful. And I’m just so glad I’ve gotten to see this happen.

Yeah, we got it to seven points in the third quarter. Man, I felt good right then. I really did. I felt like, okay, we got this.

Then of course we have the foul, the technical foul, that stuff, and it just gets out of hand at that point.

Yeah, I felt really good when we got it to seven. I thought we were going to do it. I really did. My team thought they were going to do it.