The Iowa women’s basketball program has added another heavyweight to its 2026-27 schedule.
The Hawkeyes have scheduled a matchup with Vanderbilt for Nov. 15, 2026, inside Fleet Farm Arena at the Tyson Events Center in Sioux City, the University of Iowa announced.
The Sunday matchup pits two teams that were No. 2 seeds in the most recent NCAA Tournament and could be a top-15 or top-10 showdown. In The Athletic’s early preseason top 25 published in late April (after most of the major transfer-portal movement took place), Vanderbilt was ranked No. 8 and Iowa was No. 14.
One already-interesting aspect of the matchup is that both programs acquired talented Georgia transfers in April. The Hawkeyes added first-team All-Southeastern Conference guard Dani Carnegie to their arsenal. Carnegie was one of the top transfer-portal acquisitions nationally and will face former teammate Mia Woolfolk. The 6-foot-3 forward averaged 13.9 points and 5.4 rebounds per game as a Georgia freshman.
An Iowa-Vanderbilt matchup will come seven days after an even more daunting non-conference game for the Hawkeyes, who scheduled a trip to 12-time national champion UConn for Nov. 8 in a home-and-home arrangement that will see the Huskies return to Carver-Hawkeye Arena in late 2027.
In other words, Iowa might be playing two top-10 opponents away from Carver-Hawkeye in the first two weeks of the season. The Hawkeyes are coming off a 27-7 season and bring back first-team All-Big Ten center Ava Heiden to lead the way in Jan Jensen’s third season as head coach.
While technically a neutral-site game, the trip to Sioux City will certainly have a home feel for the Hawkeyes. They have a huge following in northwest Iowa. The Tyson Center, opened in late 2003 in downtown Sioux City, is the home of arena football’s Sioux City Bandits and seats roughly 10,000 fans.
The Hawkeye women have traveled to the northwest before. In Jensen’s first season as head coach, Iowa faced Kansas at The Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and won the game, 71-58. This Vanderbilt game will come a day after the Iowa football team hosts Purdue at Kinnick Stadium.
Iowa has not announced further details to its 2026-27 schedule beyond the UConn and Vanderbilt matchups. Still, those two games alone add a ton of heft to the Hawkeyes’ non-conference slate that is expected to reach 12 games in addition to the usual 18 Big Ten Conference dates.
Hawkeyes columnist Chad Leistikow has served for 31 years with The Des Moines Register and USA TODAY Sports Network. Chad is the 2023 INA Iowa Sports Columnist of the Year and NSMA Co-Sportswriter of the Year in Iowa. Join Chad’s text-message group at HawkCentral.com/HawkeyesTexts. Follow @ChadLeistikow on X.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa women’s basketball schedules marquee SEC opponent in Sioux City
Reporting by Chad Leistikow, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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