Iowa star Gabbie Marshall once opened up about Hawkeyes HC Lisa Bluder’s impact on her career: “Wasn’t just telling me what I needed to hear”

Gabbie Marshall is proud to be an Iowa Hawkeye

Despite having failed twice to win the national championship, Gabbie Marshall has no regrets about joining Iowa’s women’s basketball program.

The 23-year-old Hawkeye joined the program in 2019 and started contributing immediately, seeing minutes in every game of the season during her freshman year.

What she seems to cherish the most about coach Lisa Bluder’s approach to her during her recruitment process is the latter’s honesty and, apparently, a joke about corn that sat well with Marshall.

“If you give us a chance and come visit, I promise, you’ll want to come here,” Bluder told Marshall.

This is how Gabbie Marshall describes the opening conversation of the process:

“I appreciated that honesty, because she wasn’t just telling me what I needed to hear.”

The key to those conversations was that Bluder was honest with Marshall regarding the fact that she wouldn’t start during her freshman season.

However, as we have seen, that wasn’t a problem for the would-be star, as she was able to contribute significantly from the bench.

Gabbie Marshall coming back for a final season at Iowa

With Caitlin Clark’s departure and the end of such a successful class of players in the Iowa Hawkeyes program, it seemed that we would see a different team next season.

However, it’s been confirmed that we will at least see Marshall return for a final season with her school. She explained her decision as follows:

“These past four years have been nothing short of amazing, because of that, I was not ready to leave this place just yet. I am truly blessed to be able to come back for another year and wear ‘Iowa’ across my chest. … We’re not done yet.”

While it is difficult to see Gabbie Marshall helping fill the scoring gap Clark had left at Iowa, she scored only 6.1 points per game this season.

Hopefully for Hawkeyes fans, Marshall will bear more of the leadership role left behind by her teammates joining the WNBA.