College basketball coaches everywhere often complain about the annoyance and difficulty of creating a non-conference schedule.
Yet every year, the Iowa women’s basketball program quietly seems to deliver a blend of games, opponents and venues that caters nicely to its passionate and robust fan base — both locally and nationally — and helps prepare its team for the annual Big Ten Conference grind.
Those complaining coaches aren’t necessarily wrong; scheduling is a difficult needle to thread. It takes two to tango, and getting dates and contract details ironed out is easier to imagine than actually get done. So, there is definitely an art to it, and the Hawkeyes have churned out solid schedules year after year with their humble, unassuming force behind the scenes.
Abby Stamp, entering her 18th season on staff, has been charged with assembling Iowa’s last 16 non-conference schedules — under head coach Lisa Bluder previously and the last three cycles under Jan Jensen. Stamp and the Hawkeyes are at it again, recently announcing a home-and-home arrangement with national power UConn.
That news was followed by the June 2 bombshell that the Hawkeyes would be facing Vanderbilt, a No. 2 seed in last year’s NCAA Tournament and led by the nation’s electric leading scorer in Mikayla Blakes, at the Tyson Events Center in Sioux City on Nov. 15.
“Jan’s mentality is to swing big,” Stamp said. “For us and our fan base, and where we want to be on the national scene, it’s important for us to play a few of those big-name, marquee games. Certainly, going to UConn (on Nov. 8, 2026), and then having UConn on our home floor (in late 2027) is exactly what we’re trying to do.”
The UConn series “came together really quickly,” Stamp said, thanks to an assist from Iowa’s athletics director. Beth Goetz used to work at UConn and still has contacts there that helped get the ball rolling.
Every August, Jensen and Stamp huddle again to start the scheduling process anew, talking about what types of opponents and layout the following year’s schedule might want to have. A big neutral-court game, like the one Iowa secured vs. Vanderbilt, is always on the wish list. Recall the Hawkeyes also played Virginia Tech, a fellow Final Four team in 2023, in back-to-back Novembers (2023, 2024) in the Ally Classic in Charlotte.
More on Iowa’s scheduling philosophy
In addition to the marquee opponents, Stamp said, Iowa’s philosophy is to evaluate where it expects to be, and then “you want to schedule the best teams that you have a chance to beat.”
Last season’s Iowa schedule is a good blueprint for the type of opponents and cadence that Jensen and Stamp want their season to have. The Hawkeyes played (and beat) then-No. 7 Baylor and Miami of Florida in a holiday tournament in Orlando, Florida. They traveled to Brooklyn, New York, for a one-off game against UConn (and lost soundly) in late December, getting a measuring stick for where the team was at. A difficult road game at Iowa State, plus annual in-state staples Drake (home) and Northern Iowa (road), were baked into the schedule. The Hawkeyes also hosted Fairfield, a quality mid-major program that has reached four of the last five NCAA Tournaments.
“There’s a lot of people that wouldn’t want to schedule them,” Stamp said. “(Jensen) is always up for bringing on the biggest challenges we can.”
The NCAA NET ranking is a big factor in scheduling. Looking back at last year’s metrics, Iowa went 27-7 and played only 11 of their 34 games in the Quad 3 (3-0) or Quad 4 (8-0) categories. That was tied with four other teams (Duke, Tennessee, Texas A&M and Penn State) for the fewest in the country. Even so, Stamp emphasized, there’s still an importance on including some lighter-difficulty home games to make sure the team gets ample bench development.
Sizing up how good opponents might be has gotten more difficult in today’s transfer-portal era, with rosters often getting an April overhaul.
Unpacking the Fairfield example, which was slated for Nov. 30, 2025, that game showed how Stamp/Jensen aim to get Iowa players accustomed to ramping up for Big Ten opponents on two- or three-day preparations. Iowa won that Sunday game, 86-72, then opened conference play the following Saturday at Rutgers.
“You’ve got to be focused in every practice, every drill,” Stamp said. “Everything matters in those (Big Ten) games, and so trying to replicate that as soon as we can is a big part of (scheduling).”
While the 2026-27 schedule hasn’t been unveiled yet, Stamp is almost done with it. The only known non-conference opponents are UConn (road), Vanderbilt (neutral), Drake (road), Northern Iowa (home) and Iowa State (home). One more game was in the process of being finalized, which should put Iowa at 12 non-conference games, plus 18 in the Big Ten, before the postseason.
Every year around this time, the finalizations of contracts allow for scheduling news to trickle out. Turns out, the timing is especially good for Stamp to perhaps celebrate just a little bit that Iowa’s 30-game schedule is almost complete.
This is only the beginning of an eventful Stamp summer
In addition to the 2026-27 roster arriving soon, Stamp and husband Quinn are expecting their third child in early July.
Stamp, 40, found out in October that she was expecting, meaning she coached the entire 2025-26 season while pregnant. The first trimester was the most difficult on a number of levels.
The Stamps have struggled with secondary infertility and encountered the crushing emotions of multiple miscarriages during their parenting journey. While grateful to have reached the eight-month mark of this pregnancy, Stamp stressed that she isn’t alone in the challenges she and her family have faced to reach this point.
“It just opened our eyes to a lot. There are so many people that struggle in so many different ways in this area,” Stamp said. “We’re just trying to be as thankful as we can for the situation we’re in, and then (thankful for) the support that we have around us.
“You feel like the luckiest people on earth to be able to provide a home and safety and love for your children, and then to have them provide that love back to you.”
Thus, baby No. 3 (they won’t find out the sex until birth) is expected to soon join daughter Mavis, who recently turned 7, and son Wyn, who is 3½.
Also challenging in those first few months: “The height of the sickness” came while Iowa was in Orlando. After beating Baylor and Miami, Stamp (reluctantly) joined the team the next day at Disney World before they all flew home that night.
“I still can’t look at pictures of Disney World without feeling a little nauseous,” Stamp joked.
Stamp is a hard-charging ally to Jensen, who doesn’t want attention and doesn’t take much rest. She’s the lone holdover from the Bluder era among Iowa’s five full-time assistant coaches. While Stamp’s pace has remained fierce amid the pregnancy, she acknowledged that on-court demonstrations gradually became more difficult.
“I think the players would probably tell you there were a few times instructing where the shortness of breath caught up with me,” Stamp said. “We had some good laughs about (those) things.”
Stamp plans to be on hand when summer practices begin June 16. She’ll take some maternity leave after the baby arrives, but will “certainly attend some of the practices, even if I’m not necessarily coaching them. This is a big, big summer for our whole team — the players, our staff, everybody to really kind of speed date and get to know (each other) really well. Because that chemistry piece is so important to what we’re trying to do.”
About the only thing Stamp pulled back on was late-spring recruiting travel, with assistant coach Sean Sullivan and video coordinator/analytics director Ben Lober stepping up.
“She’s a rock star,” Jensen said, “juggling all of that — being pregnant and having two beautiful kids at home — and still doing all the duties that we need her to do here until that little one is born.”
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: Abby Stamp unpacks Iowa’s scheduling philosophy, in-season pregnancy
Reporting by Chad Leistikow, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
