As Magic and Bird changed the NBA, Caitlin Clark changed the whole of the women’s game. As the world emerged from the pandemic, Clark gradually became one of the nation’s most prominent athletes while still a student at Iowa.
Clark’s teams won 109 games, 13 of them in the NCAA Tournament, but it was how she played that resonated with so many who’d remained agnostic – and some even antagonistic – toward the sport.
Her allure centered around her astonishing shooting range, to the point the Clark phenomenon was defined by the “logo three.”
So of course the basket she scored to break the NCAA career scoring record, held by Kelsey Plum of Washington could not be a layup or a free throw or two. It had to be Clark accepting a pass to advance the ball past midcourt less than 3 minutes into a Big Ten game against Michigan, dribbling past the midcourt line, pulling up 35 feet from the goal and launching a jumpshot from from the huge hawk head that covers the center of the floor at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
That gave Clark 3,528 points, one more than Plum.
She didn’t stop until she reached 3,951.
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