Caitlin Clark scored more than everyone, but context is needed

Caitlin Clark finished her four-year career at Iowa with 3,951 points, the most scored by anybody in NCAA Division I basketball history, male or female.

She passed previous NCAA women’s record-holder Kelsey Plum when she reached 3,528 points in mid-February. She passed Pete Maravich and his 3,667 points with a free throw March 3 against Ohio State.

Just before passing ‘‘Pistol Pete,’’ she passed Lynette Woodard, the four-time All-American who scored 3,649 points during her career at Kansas (1977-81). Woodard, who won a gold medal with the U.S. Olympic team and was the first woman to play for the Harlem Globetrotters, said something intriguing afterward.

AP Photo

‘‘My record was hidden from everyone for 43 years,’’ she stated. ‘‘I’ll just go ahead and get the elephant out of the room. I don’t think my record has been broken because you can’t duplicate what you’re not duplicating. So unless you come with a men’s basketball and a two-point shot...’’

Woodard didn’t play with the smaller women’s ball now in use, and she didn’t play when there was a three-point shot. So we understand. But she clearly rethought her statement, knowing it was bad karma to rain on the Clark parade, and took it all back shortly after.

‘‘To clarify my remarks ... no one respects Caitlin Clark’s accomplishments more than I do,’’ she said in a statement. ‘‘My message was: A lot has changed, on and off the court, which makes it difficult to compare statistical accomplishments from different eras. Each is a snapshot in time.’’

On that, she is 100% correct.

Indeed, career records broken in sports almost never occur on what we like to believe is a level playing field. Home runs hit at mile-high Coors Field? Not quite the same as those hit at old Candlestick Park, where the fog and mist blew in like cotton baffling. How about NFL records, with 12-game seasons against 17-game seasons?

But Woodard inadvertently brought up another element of Clark’s record: It was set with the NCAA as the ruling body, while Woodard played in the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), which governed the sport from 1972 to 1981. Back then, the NCAA wasn’t interested in women’s basketball. Not enough money in it, you see.

Trailblazers such as Donna Lopiano, the last AIAW president, had worked hard to promote women’s sports, only to get big-footed when dollar signs showed up in the NCAA’s eyeballs. By 1982, the AIAW was dissolved.

As far as the record books go now, the AIAW might as well never have existed. The NCAA doesn’t recognize any of those marks, so Woodard, through no fault of her own, has been ignored by stats keepers for more than four decades.

Then there’s Pearl Moore. Ever heard of her? She scored 4,061 points for Francis Marion University in 1975-79 and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2021. The school started in the basement of the Florence County (South Carolina) Library in 1957, but it soon had a women’s basketball team. And on March 10, 1979, in her final game, the 5-7 Moore scored 42 points against Tennessee-Chattanooga to break the previous all-time scoring record — male or female — of 4,045 set by Travis Grant of NAIA member Kentucky State in 1968-72.

Anybody remember Travis Grant? He went on to play in the NBA and ABA, even for a spell with Wilt Chamberlain on the Lakers.

Yet our idea of records is only as solid as our belief in them. Think of all the old sharpshooters and what they could have done — great gunners such as Purdue’s Rick Mount and USC’s Cheryl Miller — if they had played when three-point shots were part of the game. How many could long-distance ace Maravich himself have scored, for that matter?

Maravich averaged 44.2 points, anyway. Incredible. But consider that there were no Black players on his LSU team and that the SEC was almost lily-white during his reign. What was the competition like? Then again, ‘‘Pistol Pete’’ had only three years to do his scoring because freshmen weren’t eligible during his time; Clark had four.

Or ponder this: Clark could have stayed for a fifth season at Iowa because of the COVID-19 exemption. What if she added 1,000 or so points to get her total to more than 5,000 in her career?

Records come, records go. Clark’s will get wiped out someday. Keep an eye on USC’s JuJu Watkins.

And don’t forget that Babe Ruth hit his 60 homers in a 154-game season in an era before steroids.

Is he still the king? Hmmm.

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