by University of Iowa basketball star Caitlin Clark became the NCAA women’s career scoring leader Thursday night in classic Caitlin Clark fashion: pulling up from parallel to the logo at midcourt and launching a three-pointer. which went straight through the edge. She barely made it two minutes into the game, and fittingly, her basket capped the score Clark 8, Michigan 6.
Related: Caitlin Clark is the NCAA’s all-time scoring leader in women’s basketball
Eventually, Clark’s teammates scored a few baskets as well. Because Clark is a competitor, she only kept scoring after that. She finished with a career-high 49 points, 46% of Iowa’s total, in a 106-89 home win over Michigan. It was the most points ever scored by any Iowa player in a game, breaking the record Clark set earlier this season.
Clark’s 3,569 career points (and counting) is the new gold standard, putting her ahead of former Washington guard Kelsey Plum, who scored 3,527. (Pete Maravich’s five-year Division I men’s record of 3,667 points is not that far off.) Women’s college basketball has had so many great victories over the years that the 22-year d Clark’s age as the greatest player. never, not that sports fans agree on such a thing anyway. There are pending cases involving Breanna Stewart of Connecticut and Cheryl Miller of Southern California, among others. But in terms of pure offensive electricity, neither women’s nor men’s college hoops has ever seen a player quite like Clark. She’s a scoring threat almost anywhere on the hardwood, her ability to set up teammates with over-the-top passes is almost as strong as her scoring talent, and she’s been incredibly consistent over her four seasons in Iowa City.
A native of Des Moines, the state capital, Clark was a gift to the Hawkeyes when she committed to the program in 2020. A year before her college career began, Iowa landed the National Player of the Year in forward Megan Gustafson. Somehow, Clark has had an even more prolific career, winning the same honor last year and looking like a shoo-in again this season. Clark has continued to be a prolific scorer since averaging 27 points as a freshman in 2020-21, good enough to make the all-America team in his first year.
But it’s the steady, gradual improvement in Clark’s game that has made her a full-time superstar over the past few seasons. This year she scores a career-best 33 points and still has her best shooting percentages.
Clark is the most famous college basketball player, male or female, by a wide margin. Not since Zion Williamson played for Duke in 2019-2020 has an athlete captured your hearts and minds in sports – or, more importantly, social media feeds – like Clark did. Williamson made his name with incredible highlight reels of lane layups and slam dunks, which he was pulling off throughout his high school career. He was a national figure before he even graduated college. Clark’s rise was different; She was an excellent recruit herself, but her consistent theatricality over her four-year career has brought her fame and fortune.
No one player defines an entire sport, not least since Tiger Woods rebuilt golf in his image. But Clark is at the forefront and in the midst of a boom for women’s basketball. Every game in Iowa is sold out or (in the case of away games) an opportunity for a team to set its own hoops attendance record. It has drawn huge TV ratings, with audiences as large as 2m people tuning in for some games in Iowa. (Clark’s are by far the most watched women’s games this season). Nearly 10m viewers watched her in last year’s NCAA tournament national championship game against LSU, a game LSU won. Clark will have another shot at the title this year, with even more eyes on him.
Clark is the avatar of a period of rapid growth in the women’s game. She is one of several female college athletes who have established themselves as social media giants after landing a portfolio of high-profile endorsements, including Gatorade, Nike, and Goldman Sachs. The increased interest in stars like Clark helped propel the sport to new commercial heights, as evidenced by the NCAA women’s basketball tournament anchoring a lucrative new television deal with ESPN. (Number crunchers estimated the competition to be worth $65m a year to the network, about three times its previous value.)
Not long ago, Clark will be the No. 1 pick. 1 in the WNBA draft. She will certainly play her professional games with the Indiana Fever, who won the rights to the top pick in December’s draft lottery and will hope to receive just a fraction of the huge business bounce that Clark has provided for a college program that his own field. every night. Caitlin Clark’s business is scoring the basketball with great efficiency, which she has done better than any other player in NCAA history. And the business of college basketball, in general, is how many people are going to watch it on any given night.
