Are These Guys The Secret Behind Iowa Women’s Basketball Success?

It takes a village to create a dominant culture in sports. It takes great players with great work ethics, it takes great coaches, great trainers, great fans, and a little bit of luck. Having one of the best college basketball players of all time doesn't hurt either...

Even if a sports program, whether professional or collegiate, has all of those things, there's still no guarantee a team will win. The University of Iowa women's basketball team is one of the country's best teams and every Hawkeye fan should be excited to see what this team can accomplish in this year's NCAAW basketball tournament.

Can they make another run at it after playing in the championship game last year? Only time will tell. What you can believe is this team will be prepared to play against every opponent and part of that reason is these 5 student managers.

Student Managers

It takes a village to run a successful basketball program and that village includes the student managers. According to KCCI, student managers for the Iowa women's basketball team play against the team in practice. They aren't on the court running around for fun either. They're the scout team.

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The scout team's job is to try and play the role of whoever the Hawkeyes are playing. They help prepare the team by giving the Hawkeyes the best look they can at the opponent.

Will McIntire is one of the student managers and he told KCCI they try to ensure the team is ready for every game.

"We're there to help scout, so we kind of act like the opposing players, make sure they're ready for games. We pump them up, we talk trash we do all that kind of stuff."

Not only do they try and prepare the Hawkeyes for what they might see on defense or offense, but they also try to get in their heads during practice. The more you can be prepared for EVERY situation during a basketball game, the better off you're going to be, even if that includes a bit of trash talk.

Despite their best efforts, these guys lose...a lot.

Will says Caitlin Clark makes her signature deep threes in practice "more times than he can count and it's honestly very frustrating but it's also awesome to be a part of that."

Are these guys the secret to how successful the Iowa women's basketball team has been these past years? Not exactly but they play an important role and having an incredible support team behind you surely can't hurt the lady's chances.

Take a look at some of our favorite photos of the Iowa Hawkeyes last year when they made their incredible tournament run. Hopefully, we'll have some new photos after this year's tournament!