Watertown's Monika Czinano sets Big Ten tournament field-goal percentage record

On an afternoon back home in Minnesota when her Iowa star teammate set all kinds of firsts, Watertown's Monika Czinano brought home a record of her own in the Big Ten women's basketball tournament championship game.

She shot 12 times from the field and missed only one of them in the second-seeded Hawkeyes' 105-72 victory over fourth-seeded Ohio State at Target Center. Czinano finished with 26 points and seven rebounds and was named to the all-tournament team.

She set a Big Ten tournament record for field-goal percentage, with a .917 mark that surpassed Purdue's Drey Mingo's 10-for-11 game (.909) against Michigan State in March 2013.

"Monika goes 11-for-12," Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said, glancing at a stat sheet. "That's incredible."

It also would have been considered very unlikely five years ago, when Czinano left Minnesota and arrived on the Iowa campus.

"That's like one of those storybook things, right?" Bluder asked. "The kid's from the Minneapolis area, comes home, wins a championship. She wasn't highly recruited out of high school, she just wasn't."

As a freshman, the 6-3 forward-center learned behind Hawkeyes senior star Megan Gustafson, the Big Ten Player of the Year that season and the Associated Press and Naismith Player of the Year. Gustafson led her team to the Elite Eight.

"She just came in and worked," Bluder said. "She learned from Megan and she just took off. I'm so happy for her growth in so many ways. Not only her game, but her mentality, her leadership. I'm really happy for her."

Czinano delivered a 26-point, seven-rebound performance with many friends and family among a record crowd for a Big Ten women's tournament game.

She was asked afterward how many came from Watertown and places elsewhere to see her play and win a Big Ten tournament title.

"I couldn't even tell you how many I had, quite honestly," Czinano said. "I ran out of tickets before the season even started. It was so special to have this experience here, to have all my family here, even teachers who grew up coaching me and just the most random people in my life showed up today to support me. That's so special. It just shows how big my community is in supporting me.

"It was so great to have them here, it's a memory I'll never forget."

Sunday's announced attendance of 9,505 spectators — most of them from Iowa — set a Big Ten women's tournament record for any single session. That's more than the 9,417 who attended the 2014 title game in Indianapolis.

The tournament featured three of the 10 largest single-session crowds in the tournament's 30-year history. Sunday's crowd set a tournament record for all sessions. The 9,375 who attended Saturday's semifinal session and Friday's 8,577 quarterfinal-session attendance set records as well.

This year's average of 6,846 was the fifth highest per session attendance average in tournament history.

Most of those crowds came from Iowa.

"We broke the attendance record because of you," Bluder told the Iowa faithful in a post-game celebration address. "You turned this into Carver North. Why not go and do it again next year?"

Both the men's and women's Big Ten tournaments will be at Target Center next year.

Clark was named tournament Most Outstanding Player while she, Czinano and Iowa teammate Gabbie Marshall, Maryland's Diamond Miller and Ohio State's Cotie McMahon and Taylor Thierry were named to the all-tournament team.