Clark aiming to crown decorated NCAA career with a title
Published
Caitlin Clark’s dominant junior season in 2023 ended in heartbreak as the Iowa Hawkeyes lost in the NCAA women’s basketball final 102-85 to LSU.
She’s determined not to have the same ending to her 2024 season.
Despite losing veteran teammates Monika Czinano and McKenna Warnock, Clark has authored a record-setting senior season and she’s not done yet as her tournament is set to kick off against either Holy Cross or UT Martin.
The Hawkeyes are the No. 1 seed in the Regional 2 bracket in Albany.
As a fourth-year player, Clark led the nation in points per game (31.9) and assists (8.9) while pulling down 7.3 rebounds.
She also left a pile of records in her wake. In December, she cracked the 3,000-point mark against Iowa State, the 15th player in Division I history to do so. On Feb. 11, she hit the 1,000-assist mark, the first Division I women’s player to have both 3,000 points and 1,000 assists.
Four days later, she surpassed Kelsey Plum’s NCAA women’s scoring record (3,527 points), a feat Plum accomplished from 2013-17 at Washington. That same game, Clark set Iowa’s single-game scoring record with a 49-point performance.
On Feb. 28, Clark passed Lynette Woodard for the major-college women’s scoring record. Woodard played prior to the NCAA era when women’s college sports were governed by the AIAW. At Kansas from 1977 to 1981, Woodard scored 3,649 points.
In her final regular season home game on March 3, Clark surpassed Pete Maravich’s scoring record (3,667 points from 1967-70 at LSU) to become the top scoring Division I men’s or women’s player in history.
In the Big Ten final, Iowa was down 46-35 at the half against Nebraska. Clark, who struggled mightily in the first half, spurred the comeback for Iowa, scoring 30 of her 34 points in the second half. She had the dagger from three in overtime with 51 seconds left to give Iowa a four-point lead as the Hawkeyes came away with the 94-89 victory, the school’s third Big Ten title in a row with Clark taking Most Outstanding Player honours for the third time.
Clark announced on Feb. 29 she is declaring for the 2024 WNBA Draft, foregoing her fifth year of eligibility. She is the overwhelming favourite to be selected first overall by the Indiana Fever, who also had the No. 1 selection in 2023 when they selected South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston.