Dick Weiss on College Basketball
PHILADELPHIA– Iowa’s 6-0 senior guard Caitlin Clark broke Pete Maravich’s NCAA career scoring record for NCAA major college basketball Sunday, scoring 35 points, grabbing nine rebounds and six assists during a 93-83 victory over No. 2 Ohio State in Iowa City.
Clark currently has 3,655 points in four years.
Enjoy her moment. Enjoy her extraordinary talent. She is everybody’s All America and s slam dunk for national Player of the Year.
Just try to remember, as Kim Mulkey of LSU said, the men’s and women’s game at oranges and apples. They are two different games. And they were accomplished in two different eras.
Maravich had the luxury of playing for his father Press, who gave him the total green light to shoot anytime he wanted in an effort to dominant what was then still an all-white Southeastern Conference. At the same time, he set his record in three years instead of four in an era there was no shot clock and no three-point shot.
Clark needed four years and total freedom to break a record that stood for 51-years.
Former LSU coach Dale Brown reportedly charted every shot Maravich took in college and found that if there was a three-point line, he would have averaged 57.0 points per game.
Over the course of three years, that would equivalate to 4,731 career points.
Maravich averaged 39-0 points over three seasons.
Having said that, Clark has done more to move the needle as far as impacting the women’s game than any player in history.
She is the face of college basketball this season. She is a social phenomenon who has everyone talking.
She has sold out every game this season, home and away. She has sold out the B1G women’s tournament in Minneapolis and will sell out every game she plays in the NCAA tournament. Her games are appointment TV. Last season, when Iowa played LSU for the NCAA championship, the Neilsen numbers for the game were a record 9.9.
We are in an era of unparalleled growth in the woman’s game where attendance and the talent pool have grown.
South Carolina may be the favorite to win the tournament. But there are multiple other teams including Stanford, UCLA, USC, Oregon State, Iowa, Ohio State, Indiana, NC State, Virginia Tech, Louisville, Notre Dame, Syracuse, LSU, Tennessee, Mississippi State Texas, Baylor, K State, Gonzaga, Kansas State, Oklahoma that can reach the Final Four.
That’s never happened.
Is Clark the best women’s player ever? There are cases to be made for Cheryl Miller of USC who turned the United States into the best international [power in the 1980s and Breanna Stewart, who won four Most Outstanding Player awards in four straight national championship runs at UConn. Diana Taurasi, Maya Moore and Lisa Leslie also need to be in the conversation, so we won’t know where Clark stands until the end of his so far glorious career.
As good as Clark is, Iowa is not a lock to make it to Cleveland.
But in terms of pure offensive electricity, there have never been a women’s player like Clark, who can literally score the basketball from any spot on the court.
Clark technically has one more year of college eligibility if she chooses to take it. Currently, she says he will enter the W draft this spring, where she should be the first pick overall by the Indiana Fever, who see her as a cash cow for fans in the Midwest who see her as a white unicorn in the Heartlands who appeals to the children of the corn in this environment.
Clark did not take any NIL money from the university but there is still speculation she is making $9,100,000.as her popularity swells. She has deals with Gatorade, State Farm, Nike, Buick and HR Block.
There are even wild rumors Fox, which owns most of the rights to the Big Ten, has offered her $2.5 million if he stays for another year.
If she goes pro, there are limits to what she can make in the women’s professional league, most likely a $150,000 salary before endorsements to play a limited schedule in the summer.
Clark has mastered all the offensive facets of the game in college. She has unlimited range on her shoot. She is an exceptional passer, and she fills up her line on a consistent basis. If you are looking for comparisons, he reminds of Sabrina Ionescu of the New York Liberty, a pure long-range shooter who successfully competed against Steph Curry in a contrived three- point NBA v WNBA shooting contest during NBA All Star weekend.
Ionescu, who graduated Oregon in 2020, was a late addition to the US national team at the World Cup in Australia. She hardly played. Clark shoots it like that, but her defense is average in the slower less athletic college game.
Frighteningly, Clark still has room to get better. But the W will present its own problems as far as fitting into a different type of locker room and learning how to play with other players with equal or better talent.
For now, sit back and enjoy her journey, Claitlin Clark is the culmination of the dreams every little girl in Iowa has when she first puts on a uniform.
