Now Caitlin Clark stands alone. But then, everyone pretty much knew that already.
History came Thursday night with a long 3-pointer only 132 seconds into the game, one of those logo bombs from the next zip code that has driven the Caitlin Tsunami. Nothing else would have quite done it, of course, because she has never been in the habit of accomplishing something with the routine. She needed eight points Thursday night against Michigan. She had 23 by the end of the first quarter with five 3-pointers, turning into Michael Jordan against the Portland Trail Blazers in the 1992 NBA Finals. She finished with 49 points, topping her career high of 46. That was against the Wolverines, too. Michigan probably doesn’t want to see Iowa in the Big Ten tournament.
And once the deed was so quickly done, they could all share the moment; teammates, coaches, the enchanted masses who had stood in line all afternoon to get in (some forking over a month’s car payment for their tickets). Especially all those little girls who had come to see an idol and to always be able to say they were there when it happened. It was a momentous party and everyone was invited. But this party has been going on for some time. Iowa will sell out or set an attendance record in every game but two this regular season. The TV ratings are stupendous. Taylor Swift in sneakers.
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Such an iconic aura in a sport that hasn’t seen anything quite like this will carry the Clark legacy onward through time, not just the majesty of her numbers. Not just the 3,569 – and counting – points. or the 1,018 — and counting — assists, or the 892 — and counting — rebounds.
Not just the 53 30-plus point performances, which are the most for a male or female college player in a quarter-century. Or making at least one 3-pointer in 84 consecutive games, or the 15 triple-doubles, three of which involved her scoring at least 35 points, something all the other players in women’s NCAA basketball history have been able to do four times. Or the four times she has scored 40-plus points against Associated Press top-10 opponents, something no other man or woman has done even once during the span of her career. Or the 191 points and 60 assists she produced during the run to the Final Four last spring, including the first 40-point triple-double in NCAA tournament history.
Not just the idea you can go back three years, to the 10th game of her career when she scored eight points against Northwestern, and find she has had at least 15 points in all 110 games since. A scoring machine in a ponytail and headband. Not just all the daggers she has delivered, such as the game-winning long-range missile against Michigan State this season, with a Spartan coming right at here. Study that replay carefully, not Clark and the Hawkeyes dancing away in victory but the Michigan State defender, bent over with her hands on her knees, her body language screaming, "What else could I have done?" Lots of Iowa opponents have wondered about that for the past four years.
We could go on for hours with that. It’s loudly historic, especially scoring more points in a career than any woman ever had in college basketball, passing Kelsey Plum at the mountaintop. Or at least more than any NCAA Division I woman ever had. Before there was an NCAA, there was the forerunner AIAW in charge of women’s college basketball, and Lynette Woodard scored 3,649 points for Kansas in 1978-81. Pearl Moore put up an astonishing 4,061 points in the AIAW small school division at Francis Marion College in the 1970s. So those landmarks are still out there.
What you tend to get with numbers is debate. Who’s stats meant more? One day soon Clark will likely pass Pete Maravich and be able to say she is the all-time NCAA Division I scorer for both genders, but some will raise a hand to mention how Maravich scored his 3,667 points with no 3-pointer and no freshman eligibility, building his record in only 83 games. Still, as the front of the T-shirts the Hawkeyes broke out after the game declared: You break it, you own it.
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But one thing can’t be debated and that is what the Clark phenomenon became as she relentlessly climbed the career-scoring ladder. You could see that Thursday night, and the game before that, and the week before that, and the month before that. Packed houses, battalions of kids yearning for a picture or an autograph or maybe just a smile.
You can also tell by how her name has been morphed into a proper form for true superstardom. That goes one of two ways: Sometimes our sports mega-heroes become known by first name only. LeBron. Tiger. Lamar. But sometimes the first and last names get fused into one universally recognized moniker. Especially, it seems, quarterbacks. Patrick Mahomes. Tom Brady. Peyton Manning. Joe Montana.
In 22, they found a legend from central casting. Yeah, she makes scoreboards smoke and some of her 3-pointers have the carry of 9-iron shots to the green. My, how she can take the basketball and put it where James Naismith intended way back when. But the best thing she might do is pass. The NCAA’s all-time scorer also leads the nation in assists. She had 17 of them in the Big Ten championship game. Double-digit assists are a feat for one game. Clark has reached that number 45 times.
So we have an utterly fearless scorer and an eager share-the-wealth teammate and a young woman who appreciates that no matter the night, there are posters to sign and pictures to pose for and 12-year-olds to thrill by merely making eye contact. She seems like someone they’d love to have over for a slumber party.
Maybe that skill is as important as any for Clark. She not only understands the game, and her place in it, with an Einsteinian basketball IQ, but she understands the girls in the stands and the special moment for which they have come. Because she used to be there herself and has never, ever forgotten. She understands the transformational magnitude of her career because she remembers the empty days of her freshman season when the pandemic had pretty much hushed the arenas.
“I started playing during COVID so nobody was around,” she said earlier this season. “So it's kind of cool to see the evolution of my career and where we're at now. I started playing in front of nobody and now it's a sold-out arena every time basically whether we're on the road or at home, and it's kind of hard for me to wrap my head around.
“The little girls that come to our games, that's what it's all about. At the end of the day, I could have been 3-for-20 and they probably still would have been screaming and wanting my autograph. I think that's the coolest thing, you get to inspire them and make their day. Everybody on our team is such a good role model and is always going to go out of their way to inspire somebody else and give them a second of our time. That's how the game grows, that's always what I wanted my favorite players to do for me when I was younger.”
So the right player, and the right person, at the right time. Her opponents can see that.
“I do think she’ll be up there (in enduring fame) because she’s doing it at a time when there’s so much publicity watching her, there are so many eyeballs on her,” said South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, whose unbeaten Gamecocks were knocked out of the Final Four last April by Clark’s 41 points. “Even the ones that are just starting to see her greatness will be talking about her. That’s something that some of the other greats didn’t have. I think she’s got the backing of people inside women’s basketball and some first-time onlookers.”
Indeed, Clark’s biggest achievement of all may be how many new customers and fans she has drawn to her sport. A lot of athletic departments can thank her for a bonanza in their bank account after the Iowa women came through town. The legions of little girls who roared for all 49 Clark points Thursday night don’t care much about that. All they know is they want to be like 22.
