Only once in 121 games during her college career has Caitlin Clark been held to single digits in scoring.
It was her freshman season — Jan. 9, 2021, to be exact — when Clark was held to eight points by Northwestern.
Keep in mind, though, that it was still a decent night for Clark, who also had eight assists and two rebounds. Regardless, it’s a game that now — as she sits 176 points away from the NCAA women’s career scoring record — can be marked as an aberration. No one saw it in person. Clark’s freshman year — with COVID-19 restrictions forcing nearly the entire season to be played in empty gyms — was the last under subdued circumstances.
By the time those gyms fully reopened, Clark was well on her way to becoming what the world sees now — a spectacle and the face of women’s basketball.
“Last year,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said when asked when Clark’s profile shifted from star athlete to icon. “Especially in the NCAA Tournament. There are a lot of eyeballs on the tournament, and people could see just how good of a player she was. She was doing things that other people in the game were not doing.”
Star athletes are determined by their impact on games, of course. Those who transcend sports can be characterized by their ability to draw crowds, spark national conversation and garner attention — good and bad. Arguably, no one in the college game is doing a better job at that than the guard from Iowa who swept the 2023 Player of the Year awards.
How?
No doubt, it’s the winning. The shot-making. The shoulder-shrugging swagger. But it’s important to acknowledge this moment in NCAA women’s basketball history was ripe and ready for Clark and others, such as LSU’s Angel Reese, UConn’s Paige Bueckers and South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston (now with the Indiana Fever), to break through.
There were other culture-shifting players who laid the foundation for the aforementioned stars to take flight.
Consider Cheryl Miller leading USC to a 112-20 record in her four seasons, including back-to-back NCAA titles in 1983 and 1984. Think about Candace Parker waking up to reporters on her front lawn after dunking in a high school game and Diana Taurasi adding three consecutive NCAA championships to UConn’s formidable legacy.
The Clark Show is a perfect storm created by her never-before-seen talent and the unprecedented level of attention the women’s game is getting, which she has amplified. On Thursday, her rookie trading card sold for a record-breaking $78,000. There is only one woman with a higher-selling trading card — Serena Williams.
“You have to be really good to garner the dislike that [Clark] gets,” Kansas State coach Jeff Mittie said. “That creates interest and sometimes controversy. But all of it is attention for our game.”
It’s not just Clark’s scoring that has the basketball world’s attention. It’s the way she scores.
Her range is unrivaled, requiring opponents to acknowledge: “You can do everything right, and a player like her will still score,” Mittie said. “If you’re reactive, you’re already beat.”
People tune in and show up in droves because Clark has proved she’s good for at least one breathtaking, viral play per game, and that’s on a slow night.
Last week, snow was piled in mounds taller than Clark’s 6-foot frame in corners of Carver-Hawkeye Arena’s parking lot.
It was the aftermath of a blizzard that swept through the Midwest, blanketing Iowa City in a heavy layer of powder and ice before the Hawkeyes were gearing up to play No. 14 Indiana. If a snowstorm didn’t stop Clark and Co. from playing in front of a sellout crowd, certainly the leftovers wouldn’t.
Those remnants did, however, threaten some of the 15,000 attendees from successfully getting into the building on time for tipoff against Wisconsin.
“I just made a spot where there wasn’t one,” a fan yelled through the rolled-down window of another fan, desperate to park 10 minutes from tipoff. “I’ll figure it out later.”
Love her or hate her, Clark’s impact on the game can’t be diminished by opinion when it’s backed up by statistics.
In August, the University of Iowa announced Clark and Co. had sold out Carver-Hawkeye Arena for every home game for the first time in program history. Before the 2023-24 season, the program had sold out only three regular-season games.
According to Front Office Sports, when Iowa is on the road, opponents have seen a 144.8% spike in attendance on average. Sunday’s nationally televised game against Ohio State on NBC — a 100-92 road loss for the Hawkeyes — averaged 1.93 million viewers. It was the most-watched regular-season women’s college basketball game on any network since 2010.
The 18,660 fans on hand broke Ohio State’s women’s basketball attendance record. The aftermath of a fan colliding with Clark as she ran to the locker room, sending her spinning to the floor and knocking the wind out of her, broke the internet.
The incident made national headlines, and social media was set ablaze with hot takes ranging from Clark “flopping” to a demand for the banning of court-storming.
Wednesday night’s game between Iowa and Northwestern at Welsh-Ryan Arena is sold out, with tickets reselling for as much as $1,324. The cheapest ticket available on Ticketmaster is $243.
“Last weekend, we had people come from Puerto Rico, Atlanta, Florida, and these are just the ones I know about,” Bluder said.
Clark is averaging 31.7 points for the Hawkeyes, which puts her about five games away from breaking Kelsey Plum’s career scoring record (3,527 points) and 10 games away from LSU legend Pete Maravich’s men’s record (3,667).
Clark started the season at No. 37 on the all-time scoring list.
Making this even more remarkable, Clark is on pace to become the first player in Division I history — men’s or women’s — with 3,000 points and 1,000 assists. She has 952 career assists and averages 7.7 per game, putting her about six games away from that milestone.
Against Wisconsin last week, Clark passed Brittney Griner’s 3,283 points to move into fourth on the career scoring list. She finished with 32 points and five assists but could have notched another helper had one dart of a pass in transition not bounced off the face of teammate Kate Martin and into the hands of Sydney Affolter for a layup.
“I was trying to break her nose,” Clark joked after the game. “She breaks it once a year, so I was trying to help her out.”
“Not this year,” Bluder quipped with a superstitious tone.
That game ended as all of Clark’s do, with a sea of fans clamoring to catch a glimpse of the generational talent as she provided sound bites to another network that put her in a nationally televised spot. This time around, as her postgame interview concluded on the court, Clark called an audible.
Out of the corner of her eye, one young fan caught her attention. It was the same girl she had noticed mimicking her and her teammates as they went through their warmup routine.
Clark approached her, bent down to meet her at her barely 4-foot level and asked if she’d accept her game-worn shoes, a pair of Sabrina 1s. Moments later, Clark was sliding shoeless across the court in her black game socks, her personal security guard trailing closely behind.
Clark is keeping her future plans close to the vest.
In the short term, she has class, studying, practice and maybe some time with friends — the standard student-athlete experience. In the coming weeks, she’ll break more records assuredly sending the basketball world into even more of a tizzy.
A few months from now, Clark will have to decide whether to turn pro. The Fever own the No. 1 pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft and are all but guaranteed to take Clark if she decides not to return to Iowa for a fifth season.
But don’t bother asking her about it. After the Hawkeyes’ game against Nebraska on Saturday, she’s sure to tell you that all she’s focused on is Northwestern.
NOTE: After scoring 38 points in Iowa’s 92-73 win over Nebraska on Saturday, Clark is 138 points away from Plum’s NCAA scoring title.
