Crossover at Kinnick

The Crossover at Kinnick was an exhibition game between the Depaul Blue Devils and the Iowa Hawkeyes, played on a temporary court built on the grass at the Iowa Hawkeye’s football stadium, Kinnick Stadium. It was a charity event to raise money for the Iowa Children’s Hospital. This event drew a record 55,646 fans which completely eclipsed the previous record for attendance at a women’s college basketball game which was 29,619 at the 2002 National Championship game between UConn and Oklahoma. The Crossover raised $250,000 for the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital.

Sudden explosive Popularity of Iowa women’s Basketball

I’ve always been a Hawkeye fan, but I normally just watched the football team and the men’s basketball team. However, my daughter, Emma, played basketball from 4th grade all the way through high school. Because she was into basketball, we always seemed to find a few games per year to drive to Iowa City (about 60 miles away) and watch the Iowa women play. The team was usually pretty good and tickets were easy to come by. A lot of times, you could pick up free tickets on the day of a game, but usually tickets were 5 to 15 dollars each to buy through the University website.

The games themselves were pretty well attended by women’s college basketball standards, with a few thousand fans showing up for the games. Carver Hawkeye Arena seats about 15,000 fans, which was primarily built for the popularity of men’s college basketball, so a lot of those seats were empty, to the point where they would usually put up black screens in front of the back half of seats to make the stadium feel less empty when the women were playing.

As someone who attended quite a few games across the last few years, you could feel some slow momentum building in excitement for the women’s program. The team, lead by Head Coach Lisa Bluder, was always good and well coached. We watched as Megan Gustafson give way to Monika Czinano and Caitlin Clark. With each successive year, the program kept getting better and the games better attended. They slowly went from being annual NCAA tournament participants to being final four contenders and their success brought fans, lots and lots of fans.

The World Discovers Caitlin Clark

Starting in the 2021-2022 season, the seats were starting to fill up at Carver Hawkeye Arena. They drew just shy of 140,000 fans over 17 homes games averaging over 8,000 per game which was 3rd nationally for attendance. One of the reasons for escalating attendance was Caitlin Clark. She was incredible to watch, averaging 27 points and 8 assists per game. She was the best show in town and fans were taking notice.

What she is known for is the “logo shot”. Wild, often off-balance, 35 foot jump shots fly out her hand when she gets into a rhythm. Almost, without exception, you can hear me say “don’t take that sh-” just as the ball goes through the net. These “logo shots” look selfish and ridiculous, but frankly I bet her shooting percentage on logo shots is just as good as an average uncovered guard with her toes on the 3-point line in the NCAA. In the end, they’re not selfish, because they force the defense to cover the entire half court, not just inside the 3-point arc, which leaves other players, especially centers, in one on one matchups in the lane. In fact, Clark led the NCAA in assists last season with 8.6 per game, and I think stretching the defense out to guard her is one of the reasons why she was able to create so many assists.

Watching an Iowa women’s basketball game is fun, fast-paced and high scoring. Lisa Bluder’s coaching style is basically a 40 minutes of fast breaks. But once Caitlin Clark started to put up video game numbers, folks in Iowa started to take notice. That’s when these attendance numbers started to balloon. In the 2022-2023 season, the attendance at Iowa women’s basketball games jumped to 200,569, averaging 11,143 fans. That was 2nd nationally for attendance. She was, however, still not well-known nationally, outside of women’s college basketball fans.

Late in the Big 10 season, I started to notice something different about the way Caitlin was playing. It seemed like there would be times that the team was struggling and she would just take over a game. It seemed like whenever the team was trying to find a rhythm, all of a sudden she would score 10 consecutive points and would get the team back on track. It was sort of that Michael Jordan-like determination to win.

However, when she put up 41 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists to put the Hawkeyes over Louisville to go to the final four, the country took notice. Then she followed that up with 41 points in a huge upset win against what looked like an unbeatable South Carolina team to go to the NCAA finals. Iowa’s little secret was no longer a secret. In the NCAA finals, television viewership set a record of 9.9 million viewers for a NCAA women’s basketball game and was more than double the previous year’s viewership.

We Can’t Even Get Tickets

We had talked about getting season tickets for the last couple of years. Emma was still playing basketball, so we figured that there was no point in buying tickets because we would probably miss most of the games. Well, she graduated and figured that we would buy her season tickets this year. Before they went on sale, we put a deposit down to get a couple of season tickets, thinking that it wouldn’t be an issue.

However, between the time that we put down the deposit and the time that they decided who would get tickets, the NCAA tournament happened and Iowa women’s basketball became an absolutely huge deal, I mean massive. When the tickets became available they sold out, EVERY SINGLE HOME GAME, immediately. We were told that we didn’t get the season tickets we had put a deposit down on. As far as I’m aware, this has never happened before in women’s college basketball.

The Crossover

It was absolutely not lost on the Iowa Athletics Office that the women’s team was suddenly the hottest ticket in town. I’m sure that was part of the reason why they came up with this concept of the Crossover, being played in Kinnick Stadium. With the 70,000 seat capacity, they should have no problem giving some fans, like us, a chance to see a game in person, who were shut out of getting tickets. Obviously, an outdoor game had to be an exhibition game, but that’s okay.

At first, I think they only released something like 35,000 to 40,000 seats. They were using one end of the field for the setup, which meant that a large portion of the stadium wouldn’t have a very good view of the game. They must’ve changed their minds at some point and released those seats because they ended up selling 55,000 seats out of the 70,000 seat capacity.

This was obviously not just a charity event, this was their opportunity to praise last years team and hype this year’s team. Monika Czinano and McKenna Warnock came back for the game. The overwhelming focus of this game was on Caitlin Clark, though. During the half time show they even had the marching band form a giant shooter, wearing #22, shooting a basket.

The game itself, wasn’t that important, being an exhibition game, but the Hawkeyes beat the Blue Demons 94-72 with Caitlin Clark scoring 34 points. One of the most memorable moments was when Caitlin airballed a free throw, presumably because of the wind, but it was nonetheless still a little funny.

The Wave

Having never been to Kinnick, I hadn’t been able to experience the greatest tradition in college sports. The Wave is a tradition started shortly after the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital was built in 2017. The hospital is located across the street from Kinnick Stadium and because of the height of the hospital, has a clear view of the stadium from the top few floors. After the first quarter of every Hawkeye game at the stadium, the fans and players take a minute or two to wave to the children and their families in the hospital.

It’s a sweet gesture to a bunch of kids and their families who are going through a very tough part of their lives. In this case, the game itself was a fundraiser for the hospital making it extra special. It was really great to be able to experience this tradition, in person.

Will The Crossover at Kinnick Become an Annual Event?

I hope the Crossover at Kinnick will become an annual event. We had a great time and would definitely go to another one. I think it hinges on whether the team continues their current popularity. When Clark moves onto the WNBA, I imagine that the demand for the event will wane considerably, so they might have to end or alter the event. One potential way to continue the Crossover if the popularity of the women’s team starts to fade would be a double-header event with the men’s team. Right now that’s not necessary, but I hope they are able to keep this event going into the future, because it was a fun event and it was for a great cause.