CORALVILLE, Iowa- It’s THE big day for the Hawkeye Women to play in the Final Four. Just hours before Iowa took the floor against South Carolina, a tornado came through the town of Coralville.

That meant a watch party planned for Tavern Blue, along Highway 6 would not take place, as there was no power.

“Our hearts go out to all those people that were affected by the storm today,” said Tavern Blue owner, Karim Malek.  “Our reservations got cancelled, but it’s nothing compared to all these people that got affected.”

Not having customers was not the big worry for Malek.

“We lost power for two hours, so we had a generator. We tried to save the food as much as possible,” said Malek.  “MidAmerican Energy worked really hard to restore the electricity.”

“When the power went down, we did not know how long, so we had to call everybody and cancel,” said Malek.  “We expected a full house, unfortunately, we lost a lot of reservations, but we still had quite a few people come in.”

So as it turns out, the Hawkeye Women upset South Carolina 77-73.  There’s one more game on Sunday.

“It’s a wonderful place to be in Iowa City, the heart of the Hawkeyes,” said Malek. “I think the whole state loves the Hawkeyes, so we are all for them today. I truly hope that they make it all the way through.”