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Tag: Women's college basketball

  • The gap-year road trip that healed an Ivy League hoops star

    The gap-year road trip that healed an Ivy League hoops star

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    NEW YORK — She stopped working at the sushi restaurant, laid two mattress pads in the back of her Jeep and drove away from Florida with her new girlfriend, bound for a small town in the Cascade Mountains that looks like Christmas. She brought a basketball only out of habit. Abbey Hsu had to see what else there was. Anywhere else seemed like a good place to start.

    This was an impossible couple of years. She tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee near the end of her junior season of high school. On that Valentine’s Day in 2018, she hobbled to a parking lot while others ran from the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in history. A pandemic cut short her freshman year at Columbia, and shortly after her coach sent everyone home, her father got sick. Dr. Alex Hsu became the first medical professional in Florida to die from complications related to COVID-19. It was two days after his youngest daughter’s birthday.

    Instead of returning to Columbia in the fall of 2020, with contact athletics canceled, Abbey Hsu stopped. For once. Then she changed directions.

    It’s been a long time since she crammed her 5-foot-11 frame into the back of a Jeep to sleep roadside during that trip, taken on a gap year from school. Two weeks of hiking and skiing and hot springs and a visit to that charming Bavarian village named Leavenworth, Wash. So much more to do, she realized then.

    She’s now in a film room as a fifth-year senior, with more than 2,000 points behind her and Columbia’s first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance in sight. She’s also pouring a hydration packet into a water bottle; she’s caught the bug ransacking her team. Felt weird all weekend. She was nauseous when she woke up. But she’s here.

    “You just mostly feel lucky,” Hsu says. “You’re still standing today.”

    Basketball has been the easy part. After years of whisking five older children from this to that and back, Theresa Hsu decided her two youngest would pick one sport and try to be good at it. As it happened, a cousin in Massachusetts got her picture in the local newspaper, playing hoops for her high school. A copy made its way to the Hsu (pronounced SHOO) household in Parkland, Fla. Abbey, the last of the seven siblings, decided that was cool. She wanted to do that.

    So Abbey Hsu started in a rec league where no one kept score. She was maybe 7. “And I loved it,” she says, “even though it was terrible.”

    Her station has improved. Her 2,071 career points rank fourth in Ivy League history, and she’s hit a conference-record 363 career 3-pointers. (She set the league single-season mark for 3s with 108 as a sophomore … and then broke it with 112 as a junior.) She’s averaging 20.6 points and 7.1 rebounds in her final season and, on Tuesday, that earned her league player of the year honors. She’s also on watch lists, for the Naismith Trophy and the Ann Meyers Drysdale award, which recognizes the nation’s top shooting guard, and a tall guard with a consistent, mechanically flawless stroke will be at least intriguing to WNBA franchises. “If you were to watch her shoot any random day of the week and come back and watch three months from now, you’d see the same exact shot,” Columbia coach Megan Griffith says.

    Columbia, meanwhile, hosts the Ivy League women’s tournament starting Friday with an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament in reach – and a decent chance to earn an at-large spot.

    There are happily-ever-afters. And then there is deliverance. “That’s what I came here to do,” Hsu says. “It would become almost fulfillment for me and my career here and then leave a legacy behind. That’s the new standard.”

    It’s a stubbornness of purpose. It always has been.

    The moment Abbey Hsu felt a tooth loosen as a child, she wiggled it until it was out, so she could get the dollar under her pillow and put it in the drawer where she stashed all her money. She remains proud that the local library recognized her middle-school team for a district championship. Around the same age, she and a friend would spend hours at nearby North Springs Park, waiting obstinately to be chosen for pickup runs with middle-aged dudes. “Even if we weren’t difference-makers,” Hsu says, “I think we definitely earned respect.”

    Pursuing results, and getting them, matters. “I always just liked being good at stuff,” she says.

    Once upon a time, Hsu grew tired of the youth basketball grind and was considering giving it up for flag football when she was invited to be a guest player for an AAU team competing at a tournament in North Carolina. She performed well enough to get noticed by Dartmouth coaches. Word traveled to her parents, who quickly disseminated it. “With just that little bit of praise, that notoriety, she was getting up at 5 or 6, going to work out,” Theresa Hsu says. “She just got more and more intense. And never looked back.”

    She didn’t want to stop even when she was forced to stop. Hsu was a prospect with multiple mid-major Division I opportunities when she went up for a layup late in her junior year at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Physicality from opponents was nothing new. But this time, on this shot attempt, she doesn’t think the other player meant anything by it. It’s all semantics, though, when a torn ACL diagnosis arrives. “Basketball was my whole personality,” Abbey Hsu says. “My whole life. So without it for like eight or nine months, I was pretty destroyed.”

    It was about two weeks later when she heard strange sounds from the direction of Building 12 on the Stoneman Douglas campus.

    Because it was Valentine’s Day, she assumed someone was popping balloons. Then the fire alarm went off. Her teacher instructed everyone to leave class and head for the stairs. I have an elevator pass, Hsu responded flippantly, noting the crutches she was using to get around. She was directed to a stairwell anyway. When she saw her schoolmates running, she thought they were goofing off during a fire drill. She limped to a Walmart parking lot west of campus while the police cars and helicopters arrived.

    Eventually, Hsu reached a friend’s house. There, she saw the news on television. A former student took an Uber to Stoneman Douglas, walked into Building 12 with a rifle and opened fire.

    The attack lasted six minutes. Seventeen people were killed and another 17 were injured.

    “It felt like a movie,” she says. It didn’t feel real even as she and her classmates returned to school after a two-week hiatus to emotional support dogs and staffers handing out roses. She didn’t stop feeling intensely guilty about it – Why not me? Why was I a lucky one? – until she was long removed from it, having transferred to St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale for her senior year and then moving more than 1,200 miles away for college. “I think it just made me realize, be grateful,” Hsu says. “I could still go on the court and play basketball. I still have that chance. I’m still living.”

    Despite the ACL tear, Columbia’s interest never waned. “We went all in,” Griffith says. Nor did the Hsus’ interest in using basketball to attend an Ivy League school, scholarship or not. One of Griffith’s first recruiting calls to Abbey Hsu became a four-person conference, with mom and dad on the line, too; the coach immediately understood that all decisions here were family decisions. Alex Hsu never played, but basketball had become something more for him. No one else’s parents sat in the stands as their daughters practiced, silently enjoying the view. Alex Hsu did.

    To a teenager, this was so embarrassing. “I was a big brat to him,” Abbey Hsu says. “Looking back, it was so stupid.” Her dad was busy. How he spent his free time was a quiet gift, for him and her.

    A simple man, is how Abbey Hsu describes her father. Her favorite memories with him are ordering dim sum and watching television. Usually he was on the couch first, after a long day of work. He always made room for more, though, in every sense. Dr. Alex Hsu gave patients his personal cell number, so they could avoid going through a service. No insurance? Didn’t matter. He took care of his own, and was revered for it. “He was, like, famous,” Theresa Hsu says. “Everywhere we went, they seemed to know him. And we got red carpet treatment, for sure.”

    His youngest daughter was a lot like her dad. Hard-working and even-keeled. Always worrying about everyone else. Content with quiet, too. Abbey Hsu’s favorite part of New York is Columbia’s campus, since it walls off the clamor of the city. “I don’t do too well with all the noisiness,” she says. Her dad loved that she was there, though, and playfully pestered Griffith not to leave while his daughter played for the Lions. (Griffith, an alum, assured him she was going nowhere.) The team was on the verge of a postseason bid when the pandemic shut down her first season of college basketball. Like others, Hsu went home with only an abstract concept of what the world was enduring.

    Her father, who’d practiced medicine for more than three decades, fell ill soon after.

    Alex Hsu was in the ICU when he died on March 24, 2020. No one was allowed by his side.

    From afar, Griffith and the Columbia staff made it clear to some players in Florida at the time: Go to Abbey. Talk to her. Immediately. It was all they could do. It was nevertheless unimaginable. “I did anything I could to not think about it,” Abbey Hsu says.

    The news spread and found its way to Lia Sammaritano. She was a junior basketball player when Abbey Hsu started at Stoneman Douglas – “She immediately was the best,” Sammaritano recalls – and eventually enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. The two had kept in touch when Abbey wound up at Columbia. They always said they should find a way to connect. It never happened.

    In a moment of tragedy, Sammaritano reached out to Abbey Hsu again. They began to talk regularly. They were back in Florida and started hanging out instead of only discussing it. “From the outside, we’re so different,” Sammaritano says. “You’re not going to get much out of her, she’s not super talkative, where I’m a little more extroverted. … We just found this balance.” In May, Hsu decided to take a redshirt and a gap year instead of returning to Columbia. (The Ivy League eventually shut down all sports for 2020-21 anyway.) The idea of a cross-country road trip simmered; Sammaritano and Hsu got caught up in a social media trend of turning vans into mobile living units. Not having a van was a bit of a hangup. But Hsu’s boxy Jeep seemed like a suitable alternative. Poking around for potential stops, Hsu had discovered the charm of Leavenworth, Wash., and thought it could be a good target point. Her mother had moved back to Kansas City the previous August, providing a natural stopover midway.

    So in March of 2021, while college basketball tried to figure out how to finish a season in a bubble, Sammaritano quit her job as a receptionist and Hsu left her gig with Bluefin Sushi. And they hit the road.

    “The best decision we made,” Sammaritano says. “It was super healing for both of us.”

    They visited Moab. They skied in Colorado. They saw hot springs in Idaho. They found their way to Leavenworth. “It feels like you’re in a Christmas story when you’re in there,” Hsu says. The concept of living out of the Jeep gave way to stealing a few nights at hotels. But where Abbey Hsu was? It was less important than where she was headed.

    “What really helped me during that year is finding who I was outside (of basketball),” Hsu says. “I found out I liked hiking a lot. I like the outdoors a lot. I could still enjoy life without basketball being there 24-7. That just gave me a little reassurance. I still love basketball, but once the ball stops bouncing, I won’t be lost.”

    She’d created a version of herself that could exist with the sport, not because of it. But Abbey Hsu does like to be good at stuff. On the return leg of the road trip, the pair stopped again in Kansas City and Hsu found her way into a gym with a shooting machine. She went to work.

    Many months later, near the end of the 2022-23 season, Griffith brought her team together. She asked each player why they believed they could win the program’s first Ivy League championship.

    Before Abbey Hsu’s turn came, she thought about her gap year. And all the time after that. And who she was and what she decided she had to do. She found her answer there.

    “I know,” she told the group, “because I would shoot so much that my fingers bled.”


    Abbey Hsu, left, and Lia Sammaritano crossed the country in Hsu’s Jeep on a “super healing” adventure. (Courtesy of Lia Sammaritano )

    February and March are hard. Griffith and her staff check in on their star guard a little more this time of year. A conversation between Griffith and Hsu, diving into the enormity of all of it, is almost a rite of late winter. “You’re like, ‘Are you carrying this on your own too much?’” Columbia’s coach says. “I just try to help her process it. Otherwise, it sits with her.”

    Abbey Hsu still doesn’t feel free of the burden Parkland heaped upon her and the hundreds of others who escaped that day. She’s still not sure she fully grieved her father, and she knows there’s no end to that process, anyway.

    There’s only moving ahead.

    She can identify triggers. She knows how to deal with them better, she says, because she knows herself better. Every good cry is another step.

    “If I complain about all the stuff that I’ve been through,” she says, “I’m kind of taking away from the great life I got to live.”

    She has ideas for other big trips, including one to Hong Kong, to see where her father grew up. But before that? Maybe she sees where basketball takes her this time, no roadmap required.

    (Illustration: Daniel Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Vera Nieuwenhuis, Isaiah Vazquez / Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • NAACP asks college athletes to ‘reconsider’ attending public Florida schools

    NAACP asks college athletes to ‘reconsider’ attending public Florida schools

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    In an open letter published Monday, the NAACP urged Black college athletes to “reconsider any potential decision” to attend a public university in Florida following last week’s news that the University of Florida is eliminating its Diversity and Inclusion office.

    The Gainesville university’s decision came in response to a law signed last year by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, which prohibits the state’s public universities from using state or federal dollars for diversity programs or activities. In a March 1 memo, the university announced it would eliminate 13 roles, including the chief diversity officer, and reallocate $5 million it was spending on DEI initiatives.

    Monday’s letter, signed by NAACP board chairman Leon W. Russell and president and CEO Derrick Johnson, is addressed to NCAA President Charlie Baker and current and prospective college athletes. It predicts that “while the University of Florida may be the first, it won’t be the last.”

    Six public Florida universities — Florida, Florida State, Central Florida, South Florida, Florida Atlantic and Florida International — compete at the FBS level.

    “Florida’s rampant anti-Black policies are a direct threat to the advancement of our young people and their ability to compete in a global economy,” Johnson said in a statement. “Diversity, equity, and inclusion are paramount ensuring equitable and effective educational outcomes. The value Black, and other college athletes bring to large universities is unmatched. If these institutions are unable to completely invest in those athletes, it’s time they take their talents elsewhere.”

    The NAACP letter mirrors the sentiment of former Gators great Emmitt Smith, who posted on March 3 he was “utterly disgusted by UF’s decision and the precedent it sets.”

    In his statement, he said, “to the MANY minority athletes at UF, please be aware and vocal about this decision by the University who is now closing the doors on other minorities without any oversight.”

    In the school’s memo announcing the elimination of the DEI office, officials wrote, “The University of Florida is — and will always be — unwavering in our commitment to universal human dignity.”

    The NCAA and the Florida governor’s office each had not returned a message seeking comment at the time of publication. On the day the University of Florida announced it was shuttering the DEI office, DeSantis tweeted, “DEI is toxic and has no place in our public universities.”

    (Photo: Miami Herald / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • The Caitlin Clark business is booming. Here’s how her WNBA sponsorships are lining up

    The Caitlin Clark business is booming. Here’s how her WNBA sponsorships are lining up

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    Last fall, representatives from Gainbridge, an Indiana-based annuities seller, reached out to Caitlin Clark’s marketing agents at Excel Sports Management to discuss a sponsorship deal. The company was launching a new product line and its executives believed Clark could help them reach younger customers.

    Minji Ro, Gainbridge’s chief strategy officer, is also a longtime WNBA fan, and she knew that the Indiana Fever had a 44.2 percent chance of winning the WNBA lottery in December. Gainbridge holds the naming rights to the Fever’s arena, and Clark would be the presumptive No. 1 pick if she declared for the draft.

    But Ro said that the company didn’t even discuss the decision with Clark during the months of negotiations that finally ended in February with a signed contract. Ultimately, Ro said, she didn’t care where Clark would play, whether it was in the WNBA or at the University of Iowa for one more season. She just wanted to be in the Caitlin Clark business.

    “We were in no matter what,” Ro said. “Because that’s the power of Caitlin Clark. So she plays in Indiana, that’s great, but it doesn’t actually matter where she plays because she’s gonna sell out everywhere.”

    When Clark finally declared for the draft last week, as had long been expected, she set an end date to her record-setting college career. The WNBA awaits, and the Fever won the No. 1 pick in December, putting them in prime position to land a player who is rising and who has shown herself to be a marketing powerhouse, with a sponsorship portfolio of blue chip companies and more than 1 million Instagram followers.

    Laced throughout that lively conversation about what Clark can do for the league, there has also been fretful, speculative discussion of what the decision would mean for Clark financially, and if being in the WNBA would amount to a pay cut.

    The consensus among a coterie of people involved in women’s basketball and involved with her directly is that Clark’s income, and her marketing potential, would not suffer once she jumps to the WNBA this summer. Instead, they say, she seems likely to surpass what she earned this season at Iowa.

    “It’s a bad narrative,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said of the idea that Clark would be sacrificing by playing professionally.

    “Pre-Caitlin Clark, I’ve been trying to correct the media that NIL deals, when they’re national sponsors like Caitlin and Angel Reese and Cameron Brink, those are just called endorsements in the pros. I just find it funny that nobody ever said this about LeBron James, or Michael Jordan who made a lot more money with their endorsements than they did in their salary in the NBA. Nobody ever said that. Now, all of a sudden, because it’s women’s sports, people are saying that. That’s absolutely untrue when you have these national brands.”

    The dilemma is one that male college basketball players rarely have to reckon with. A job in the NBA usually comes with a multi-million dollar salary, and lucrative marketing deals for the top picks. But it has followed Clark, and other top women in college basketball, for the last three years as college athletes have been able to profit off their name, image and likeness rights. Today, the choice to head to the WNBA comes with a head-to-head comparison: a rookie pro salary and endorsement prospects versus the NIL income from local collectives and businesses associated with college sports.

    While top NBA prospects often leave for the league as soon as possible, the choice for top women’s players lingers. Paige Bueckers, a projected top-3 pick, recently said she would return for a senior season at the University of Connecticut.

    Clark, however, is in a class of her own. At a time when women’s sports is ascending, she is the rising tide lifting those boats even higher. She added two new national sponsors just this week and is expected to sign a new sneaker deal that will be one of the biggest in the WNBA, according to two people briefed on the situation.

    Her marketing infrastructure has expanded in kind. This fall, she signed with Excel for marketing representation, sharing an agent with Peyton Manning, helping to pile up the endorsements.

    Gainbridge rolled out her arrangement on Tuesday. She joins Billie Jean King and Annika Sörenstam in promoting the company’s latest annuities product for women. Panini said Wednesday that Clark is the first woman it has signed to an exclusive trading card deal.

    Panini engaged Clark’s camp in October. Jason Howarth, Panini’s senior VP of marketing, said the two sides completed the contract more than a month ago but waited until the right time to announce it. It will take effect on April 1. Clark had previously had a deal with Topps.

    “Caitlin is a transcendent athlete, and we think that she is going to be special whether she stayed at Iowa or whether she decided to go to the W,” Howarth said. “We were willing to commit to that. We knew exactly whatever her decision was, we’d be comfortable with it and we’d lean in on it and figure out what we’re going to do and how we’re going to present it.”

    The most high-profile of her endorsements will keep her under contract past her Iowa days and into the start of her WNBA career. Her contracts with Gatorade and State Farm extend into her WNBA career, one person with knowledge of her marketing deals said.

    Jeff Kearney, Gatorade’s head of sports marketing, said the company has a multi-year deal with Clark. A sponsorship deal with Hy-Vee, the grocery chain, will run past 2024, Tina Pothoff, Hy-Vee’s vice president of communications, said. State Farm did not respond to a message seeking comment. A spokesperson for Buick replied after initial publication to note that it does not currently have a sponsorship deal with Clark, though it did previously feature her social media campaign.

    “It’s gonna be harder,” Kearney said. “You know the competition is going to be tougher. Players are faster. The players are better. But again, I think she has an it-factor and is driven to succeed. So it certainly doesn’t change the approach that we have of trying to celebrate this phenomenal athlete and tell her story. It doesn’t matter what jersey she has on.”


    “It doesn’t matter what jersey she has on.” Clark’s worth is expected to see more gains in the WNBA. (David Berding / Getty Images)

    Though many of her deals will continue to run, she is on the precipice of making even more money than she did this season at Iowa. Clark did not take any money from Iowa’s main collective, according to the Wall Street Journal.

    She will make a salary in the WNBA — the No. 1 pick is guaranteed $76,535 in her first season — unlike at Iowa. She can also avail herself of up to $250,000 in a league marketing deal and up to $100,000 in a team marketing contract if she eschews playing abroad next offseason, or she can sign what is likely to be a high-paying contract to play for a team in Europe or China.

    She has a deal with Nike, which is one of the WNBA’s financial partners as part of its Changemakers program. The league often pushes those companies to use its stars in marketing campaigns, especially those who have a league marketing deal. Some have signed individual endorsement deals after the league’s run out, and Engelbert said other companies could soon get financially involved.

    “I suspect we’ll have some of our huge partners step up here too as huge players come in with the followership,” she said.

    One WNBA agent was strident that Clark, or any top player entering the league, would make more as a professional.

    “If you’re the right type of talent, it doesn’t matter if you’re in college, the pros, in Indiana, L.A.” the agent said. “All these things help, of course. It’s not that you have to take a pay cut to go pro.”

    Engelbert pointed out that several WNBA players, like A’ja Wilson, Jewell Lloyd and Arike Ogunbowale already have sizable endorsement deals.

    Clark will still retain her large Instagram following, and her fan base from Iowa will likely continue to root for her. A new city — Indianapolis — will adopt her. Clark has also become such a nationally beloved brand that her marketing potential is not constrained by one market.

    The most significant new business opportunity is likely to be her upcoming sneaker and apparel free agency. Clark’s deal with Nike will end after the conclusion of this college basketball season, a person briefed on the deal confirmed, a detail first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

    Though Clark was with Nike in college, her market was likely muted compared to what she could draw as a pro, industry insiders said. Iowa already had an apparel deal with Nike, so Clark was going to wear those sneakers on the court regardless of any individual deal she signed. And she would have been unable to wear the sneakers of another company for her record-setting feats if she signed with a company other than Nike. (LSU’s Flau’jae Johnson has a Puma endorsement even though the school wears Nike, but she cannot wear them when she plays for the Tigers.)

    Clark will be unconstrained in the WNBA and she is expected to draw a significant contract for the upcoming WNBA season. Nike, Adidas and others are expected to pursue her. Multiple sources with knowledge of the sneaker industry said Clark is set to sign a deal for more than $1 million annually, which would be one of the richest among WNBA players.

    “She’ll be regarded as one of the greatest gets of all time for the brand that gets her,” one sneaker company executive said.

    Sara Gotfredson, who was once a marketing and sales executive at ESPN and Disney, said that brands have been shy to deploy money on NIL deals compared with what they spend in endorsements for professionals.

    But some women’s college basketball players may see their popularity, and earning power, peak during those years, with a dedicated collective and local businesses ready to engage them in a market where they are one of its top athletes, then lower profiles when they reach the WNBA. That will not be true for Clark, said Gotfredson, who is now a co-founder of Trailblazing Sports Group.

    “The NCAA is a great springboard for these athletes, and especially for such a superstar like Caitlin Clark,” she said. “But I don’t subscribe to the theory that the NCAA is sort of the pinnacle of these women’s careers. I think if anything she’s going to get more visibility, more brand deals, gain more popularity in the W.”

    There has been little concern among her sponsors that Clark will become less marketable when she gets to the WNBA. Instead, there is intrigue and optimism that she may be able to help the league.

    While ratings have improved in the WNBA over the last few seasons, they have gone up even higher in college basketball. Last year’s NCAA Tournament championship game between Iowa and LSU averaged 9.9 million viewers and was the most watched women’s college basketball game ever. The Iowa–South Carolina semifinal game drew 5.5 million viewers. WNBA Finals games last season averaged 728,000 viewers.

    Attendance at her games has regularly trumped WNBA games as well. The league averaged 6,615 fans per game last season — a five-year high — while Iowa averaged 100.7 percent capacity at home with 14,998 fans per game, according to NCAA data, the second-highest in women’s college basketball. The Hawkeyes drew 55,651 fans to the school’s football stadium in October for an exhibition game — the largest attendance for a college basketball game this season — and three of the other eight most well-attended women’s college basketball games this season were at road arenas when Iowa visited Big Ten opponents.

    Clark, and Iowa, have been a ratings machine this season as she chased college scoring records. Three Iowa games have been among the top 10 most-watched college basketball games this season, men’s or women’s. Sunday’s regular-season finale drew 3.39 million viewers — the sixth-highest viewership for a basketball game this season, including the NBA. A Fox executive tweeted Tuesday that women’s college basketball games have averaged more viewers than men’s games on the network this season.

    Kearney said in his discussions with Engelbert, there is already interest in how often and when Clark’s games will air on nationally televised broadcasts. When she joins the WNBA, Clark will be just one of three WNBA players with a Gatorade endorsement. Engelbert has stressed to its marketing and broadcast partners that the league is trying to create household names and asks for their help, but with Clark they are getting a ready-made star.

    “It’s one of those things where you get an athlete like this who is doing things that are maybe extraordinary isn’t the right word, but the people are paying attention — male, female, old young,” Kearney said. “That’s gonna carry over if she keeps doing what she’s doing. People are gonna tune in and you’re gonna see the numbers rise.”

    (Top photo of Caitlin Clark: Matthew Holst / Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • Triangle teams gear up for ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament

    Triangle teams gear up for ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament

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    GREENSBORO, N.C. (WTVD) — Everything looked set last week for No. 11 Virginia Tech to carry its late-season surge into the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament. Instead, the reigning champions are reeling and concerned about the status of their star player.

    The Hokies (23-6) arrive in Greensboro this week as the top seed after finishing atop the league’s regular-season standings for the first time in program history. But their 10-game winning streak vanished with back-to-back losses. And it’s unclear whether graduate center Elizabeth Kitley — named league player of the year for a third straight season on Tuesday – will be able to play because of a left leg injury suffered last weekend at Virginia.

    “We don’t know anything yet,” Hokies coach Kenny Brooks said Monday. “Obviously, we’re just waiting and praying for good results.”

    Virginia Tech is the top seed and begins play in Friday’s quarterfinals, part of a field that includes No. 10 North Carolina State, No. 14 Notre Dame, No. 20 Syracuse and No. 24 Louisville.

    First Team All-ACC Aziaha James looks to help NC State win its fourth ACC championship in five years.

    Karl B. DeBlaker

    The 6-foot-6 Kitley was an Associated Press All-America third-team pick in 2022 and second-teamer last year, and the soft-shooting big is the program’s all-time scoring and rebounding leader. She helped Virginia Tech follow last year’s first ACC Tournament title by advancing to the program’s first Final Four.

    Kitley was hurt Sunday night with 6:05 left when her knee appeared to buckle when she landed on a transition layup. Kitley eventually walked off the court to the locker room and later returned to the bench but didn’t play again.

    It marks the second straight year that the top seed enters the tournament with a major injury question mark. Last year it was Notre Dame losing star point guard Olivia Miles in the regular-season finale.

    The Fighting Irish didn’t specify Miles’ status until saying she would have season-ending surgery. But that announcement came days after Notre Dame had secured a No. 3 regional seed in the NCAA Tournament, while Miles went on to miss this year because of the same injury.

    THE SCHEDULE

    The tournament opened Wednesday with No. 13 seed Boston College knocking off 12-seeded Clemson 85-72 in the first of three first-round games. In the second matchup, Georgia Tech handled Pitt, 73-60.

    In Wednesday’s nightcap, No. 14 seed Wake Forest, who came in with only six wins in the regular season, stunned No. 11 Virginia 58-55 after trailing much of the second half. The Demon Deacons finished on a 23-9 run to end the game and pull off the shocker.

    Duke freshman Oluchi Okananwa was named ACC Sixth Player of the Year.

    Karl B. DeBlaker

    Boston College moved on to play Louisville on Thursday at 11 a.m. Miami and UNC take the court at 1:30 p.m. In the afternoon session, Duke faces Georgia Tech and Florida State takes on the upset-minded Demon Deacons.

    Syracuse is the No. 3 seed behind Virginia Tech and N.C. State, while Notre Dame is seeded fourth.

    The championship is Sunday.

    THURSDAY’S RESULTS

    In the first game of the day, Boston College had multiple changes to pull off the upset but fell to Louisville 58-55. The Eagles missed a long 3-pointer as time expired that would have sent the tilt to overtime.

    Ninth-seeded Miami overcame an early double-digit deficit to knock out No. 8 UNC 60-59 in a later second-round matchup.

    It was a disappointing end for the Tar Heels, who now await to learn their NCAA tournament seeding.

    Lazaria Spearman had 12 points and 10 rebounds and scored the go-ahead points as ninth-seeded Miami erased a 14-point deficit.

    The Hurricanes (19-11) will play top-seed and No. 11-ranked Virginia Tech in Friday’s quarterfinals.

    Deja Kelly scored 15 points, though on just 6-of-20 shooting, and grabbed nine rebounds for the Tar Heels (19-12). Alyssa Ustby also scored 15 points and Lexi Donarski added 12.

    Spearman scored on consecutive follows during a 10-0 run to give Miami the lead with 2:40 to go – its first lead since the opening minutes. Lattimore added a three-point play during which Spearman was called for an intentional foul for unnecessary contact. Donarski converted the awarded free throws and Kelly got the Tar Heels within a point on a drive with 1:54 left.

    Neither team scored again, both turning the ball over twice, Spearman missing two free throws and Kelly missing two shots, including a final one in traffic that didn’t reach the rim at the buzzer.

    After shooting 50% in the first half, UNC finished at 36%, the same as the Hurricanes. Miami outrebounded the Tar Heels 41-32, including a 13-7 edge on the offensive glass for a 16-5 advantage on second-chance points. The Miami bench outscored UNC’s 15-3.

    UNC led 37-30 at halftime behind 11 points and eight rebounds from Kelly. The Tar Heels led 20-13 after one quarter and then used an 11-2 run early in the second to extend its lead to 14. Williams took an inbound pass with 5.5 seconds remaining and nearly fell dribbling through defenders before heaving a near-halfcourt shot that went in to get Miami within seven.

    LURKING WOLFPACK

    N.C. State (25-5) spent nearly all year in the top 10 of the AP Top 25 poll and won the tournament three straight times before Virginia Tech’s title last year.

    “It’s a lot of new people, a lot of new pieces, so to speak,” Wolfpack coach Wes Moore said. “At least we know the formula, and know how we want to approach it and can go over there with some confidence.”

    STAR WATCH

    Notre Dame freshman Hannah Hildalgo has been a star all season, averaging an ACC-best 23.8 points to rank third nationally. The 5-6 guard was named ACC rookie and defensive player of the year on Tuesday.

    She averages a national-best 4.86 steals per game and is the only player nationally averaging at least 20 points, 5.0 rebounds, 5.0 assists and 4.0 steals.

    NCAA OUTLOOK

    The ACC is set for another strong haul of bids to the NCAA tournament, starting with that group of five ranked teams. FSU, Duke and UNC also look on solid ground.

    UNC’s Deja Kelly made First-Team All-ACC and looks to take her team deep into the ACC Tournament.

    Karl B. DeBlaker

    The Associated Press contributed

    Copyright © 2024 WTVD-TV. All Rights Reserved.

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  • How should broadcasts handle court-storming?

    How should broadcasts handle court-storming?

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    Throughout a three-decade career as a prominent ESPN play-by-play broadcaster, Dave Pasch says he has been on the mic for two college basketball games that ended in a court-storming. One occurred earlier this month as unranked LSU upset Kentucky as time expired at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center in Baton Rouge, La. Pasch recalled this week a conversation he and analyst Jay Williams had with an LSU athletics department staffer prior to the game.

    “We asked, if they beat Kentucky, will they storm the court?” Pasch said. “He was like, ‘Nope, we don’t storm the court here. We’ve beaten Kentucky before.’ Well, they won on this crazy, last-second shot and, of course, they stormed the floor.”

    In the game’s final sequence, you can clearly hear Williams say, “Didn’t we talk today about if LSU has the right protocol in place for a court storm?” as ESPN’s cameras aired a wide shot of LSU fans spilling onto the court.

    The issue of court-storming went national this week after Wake Forest fans ran onto the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum floor following a win over Duke on Saturday. Cameras picked up video of multiple fans making contact with Duke star Kyle Filipowski, who ended up limping off the court, prompting Duke coach Jon Scheyer, fuming in a postgame press conference, to ask, “When are we going to ban court-storming?” Last month, Iowa star Caitlin Clark collided with an Ohio State fan after the Buckeyes’ upset of the Hawkeyes in Columbus, Ohio.

    GO DEEPER

    Should court-storming be banned — or at least made safer? ‘It’s a tough challenge’

    ESPN producer Eric Mosley and director Mike Roig estimated they have worked 16 to 18 college games where fans of a team have stormed a court. A number of those court storms occurred when a team had a home upset of perennial heavyweights Duke, Kansas or Kentucky. Roig directed Arkansas’ 80-75 win over Duke on Nov. 29, and you can see the wide shot cut by Roig as fans flooded onto the Bud Walton Arena Floor.

    Mosley said production planning for court-storming happens long before tip time. ESPN production crews pre-scout where they can find a safe place for their reporter and camera operators to interview a winning coach and player. Directors such as Roig hold meetings hours before games with camera operators to go over protocol and various scenarios including the storming of a court. The camera setup is such that viewers potentially get access to a lot of entry points. For a regular-season college basketball game, there are usually five non-manned hard and robotic cameras. Those are located in positions safe from the crowd. Then there are three hand-held cameras which are helmed by operators situated on the baselines and centre court. (The overhead camera for Wake Forest-Duke got the best shot of what happened to Filipowski.)

    “One of the first questions we ask when we get on-site with the (sports information director) for certain games is whether there is an appetite for a court storming or if security kind of allows that,” Mosley said. “We find out where the student section is and what the security situation is there. We ask where can we get our cameras and reporter to meet a coach and star player for that postgame interview? We try and get ahead of that stuff as early as possible because we don’t want to get caught in a position where our folks like Holly Rowe, Jess Sims, Kris Budden and our camera folks are unsafe. We don’t want them trapped and trampled. For the most part, we have been pretty successful.”

    The play-by-play broadcaster for the Duke-Arkansas game was Dan Shulman, who estimated he has called 20 to 25 games that have involved court-storming during his career as an ESPN broadcaster. (Shulman is also the TV voice of the Toronto Blue Jays.)

    “As fun as they can look on TV, I have always been worried about what could happen,” Shulman said. “I remember a court-storming at a Louisville-Charlotte game I was doing, and Doris Burke, who was the sideline reporter on the game, was trying to get an interview with the Charlotte coach, and I was worried for her safety. It was complete chaos on the court.

    “Whenever there is a court-storming, it’s hard for us at our table really to see much of what is going on. All we can really see are the people closest to our table. Sometimes the student section may be behind our broadcast location, so knowing they are heading our way to the court can obviously be a bit disconcerting as you are trying to navigate a broadcast. I think for the most part, people in television hope that when these do happen, it is all good fun, and no one gets hurt. There’s no question it’s a good visual on TV, which is enjoyed by a lot of viewers. But to me, the risk outweighs the reward.”


    Wake Forest fans took over their home court after Saturday’s win. An injury to Duke’s Kyle Filipowski has reignited discussion around court-storming. (Grant Halverson / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

    Bob Fishman agrees with Shulman. Fishman retired from CBS Sports last year after 50 years of employment between CBS News and CBS Sports and directed 39 NCAA men’s Final Fours, including Michael Jordan’s title-winning shot in the 1982 title game and North Carolina State’s upset of Houston the following year. Fishman said he has thought a lot recently about court-storming and would never tell a camera operator to run onto the court during one, making sure they held a position under the basket and shot what they could.

    “I’m pretty firm on what I think should be done — you can’t ignore it,” Fishman said. “It’s not like a streaker running across the field at a football game, which you don’t show. I think that you have to show it because it’s part of the story and especially now since players have been injured. How I would do it is throw up a wide shot of some sort, maybe from a backboard camera or from a high beauty camera as we call it. Then I would make sure that my cameras on the court were recording everything and that stuff was being fed into a tape machine. I would never put that on the air. But I do think you have to show something, which would in my mind (be) a high shot.”

    Broadcasters and production crew, especially at a 24/7 news outlet such as ESPN, have to follow the story until its conclusion, whether they are live on air or not.

    “We have to keep in mind that the documentation continues even when we’re off the air,” Mosley said. “We have to treat it as a news story. For example, some of the Filipowski stuff happened after the crew had already signed off and the network transferred to another game. We’re taught and told repeatedly that we need to stay there and document as long as we can. That’s because somebody is going to be looking for that stuff.”

    Mosley and Roig say they often think about how to navigate documenting a court-storming without glorifying the action.

    “It’s a hard question to answer,” Roig said. “You’re both documenting and kind of glamorizing it at the same time. As a director, you’re toeing that line. We’re always taught as directors when that one person comes onto the court or the field, you don’t show them. Because more people will do it if you show them. It’s go wide and away. But this is a little different animal, right? We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of people coming onto the court. … You blur the line of documentation or glorifying it. You have to have the mindset of you are documenting it, but at the same time, you have to be careful of how you document it.”

    During a segment on ESPN’s “First Take” on Monday, longtime ESPN college basketball commentator Jay Bilas was critical of sports broadcasters glamorizing court-storming.

    “Years ago when fans would run out on the field or court during a game, it was network policy not to show that because we didn’t want to encourage it,” Bilas said. “So what does that say about the way we in the media use these images now? We can’t deny that we encourage it. Or at least tacitly approve of it. Everybody has to accept some responsibility for this. I don’t think it is the right thing to allow this, but I know it’s going to continue.”

    Said Roig: “It’s really a touchy point because as directors, it’s a great scene, right? You want to showcase that. But I’ve never had one prior to seeing the one last week (with Wake Forest-Duke) where it got to that point where it was not fun anymore.”

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Calling Caitlin Clark: Broadcasters on the honor and challenge of announcing history

    (Top photo of the scene after Saturday’s Duke-Wake Forest game: Cory Knowlton / USA Today)

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    The New York Times

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  • Iowa’s Caitlin Clark wants more focus on team during final stretch now that NCAA record is broken

    Iowa’s Caitlin Clark wants more focus on team during final stretch now that NCAA record is broken

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    IOWA CITY, Iowa — More scoring records are in sight for Caitlin Clark, but right now the Iowa superstar is looking forward to a break from the chase.

    She passed Kesley Plum as the NCAA women’s career scoring leader Thursday night, putting up a school-record 49 points in a 106-89 victory over Michigan and running her career total to 3,569.

    Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said it was a relief to have Clark’s pursuit of the NCAA record end.

    “It’s been a little bit of a distraction, but a good distraction, right?” Bluder said. “You want these kinds of distractions for your team. But at the same time, it’s time now for us to really focus on making our team better and getting ready for Indiana next week, the Big Ten Tournament and the NCAA Tournament.”

    With Clark having become the face of college basketball, the spotlight has been on the fourth-ranked Hawkeyes for a year.

    They reached the national championship game for the first time, losing to LSU in a game that set a television viewership record and is remembered for the “you can’t see me” gesture Angel Reese made toward Clark.

    The Hawkeyes drew national attention again in October when they played DePaul in an exhibition at Kinnick Stadium that drew 55,646, the largest crowd to ever watch a women’s basketball game.

    And from the start of the regular season, Clark’s progress toward the NCAA scoring record turned into the narrative.

    “Obviously, getting this record is tremendous and it has to be celebrated,” she said. “There are so many people who have come before me and laid such a great foundation for women’s basketball, and that has to be celebrated, too.

    “We’re really getting into the best part of basketball season. These are the times when your team really shows who you are, and I believe coach Bluder always has us playing our best basketball at the end of February and in March.”

    When the Hawkeyes play at Indiana next Thursday, Clark will be 80 points away from Lynette Woodard’s major college basketball women’s record of 3,649 for Kansas from 1978-81. The NCAA doesn’t recognize that record because it was set when the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women governed women’s college sports.

    Assuming Clark breaks Woodard’s record, she will be within striking distance of the overall NCAA mark held by LSU’s Pete Maravich, who finished his career with 3,667 points. He amassed his points in only three seasons (1967-70) because freshmen of his era weren’t allowed to play on varsity teams.

    Woodard and Maravich set their records when there was no 3-point shot in college basketball.

    Francis Marion’s Pearl Moore has the overall record with 4,061 points from 1975-79 at the small-college level in the AIAW. Moore had 177 of her points at Anderson Junior College before enrolling at Francis Marion.

    Asked if Woodard’s record should be considered the true major-college women’s record, Bluder said she hadn’t thought about it but acknowledged “that’s probably a really valid point.”

    “We played basketball before the NCAA,” she said, “so I don’t know why we have this NCAA record. I think that makes really good sense.”

    ___

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    AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball

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  • Iowa’s Caitlin Clark Breaks NCAA Women’s Basketball Career Scoring Record – KXL

    Iowa’s Caitlin Clark Breaks NCAA Women’s Basketball Career Scoring Record – KXL

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    IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Caitlin Clark broke the NCAA women’s career scoring record, making a long 3-pointer in the first quarter for No. 4 Iowa against Michigan on Thursday night.

    Clark went into the game needing eight points to pass Kelsey Plum’s total of 3,527.

    She wasted no time, making her first three shots — a layup and two 3s — and scoring Iowa’s first eight points. The record-breaker was a 3 off the dribble on the left wing near the Mediacom Court logo with 7:48 left in the first quarter.

    Clark and her dynamic game have captivated the nation for two seasons. Last year, she led the Hawkeyes to the NCAA title game and was named AP player of the year. More than just her pursuit of the record, her long 3-pointers and flashy passes have raised interest in the women’s game to unprecedented levels. Arenas have been sold out for her games, home and away, and television ratings have never been higher.

    It’s all been more than Clark imagined when the 6-foot guard from West Des Moines stayed in state and picked Iowa over Notre Dame in November 2019.

    “I dreamed of doing really big things, playing in front of big crowds, going to the Final Four, maybe not quite on this level,” Clark said. “I think that’s really hard to dream. You can always exceed expectations, even your own, and I think that’s been one of the coolest parts.”

    Though her basketball obligations and endorsement deals (State Farm ads, etc.) have put demands on her time, she said she is the same person who showed up on campus four years ago.

    “I just go about my business as I did when I was a freshman during COVID,” said Clark, a senior who still has another season of eligibility remaining, if she wants it. “Sure, my life has kind of changed somewhat. I still live the exact same way. I still act like a 22-year-old college kid.”

    She said she still cleans her apartment, does laundry, plays video games, hangs out with friends and does schoolwork.

    “The best way to debrief and get away from things is getting off your phone, getting off social media and enjoying what’s around you and the people around you and the moments that are happening,” she said.

    Her run to the record could have come earlier, but it arrived back at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, where ticket resale prices for the Michigan game ranged from hundreds of dollars into the thousands. Fans again showed up early outside the arena, many wearing black-and-gold No. 22 jerseys and holding signs paying homage.

    Mya Anderson and her friend, Ellie Steffensen, both 12, and their moms made the six-hour drive from Canton, South Dakota, to see Clark break the record.

    “I think she’s inspired a lot of people,” Mya said.

    “Yeah, a lot of little girls,” Ellie added.

    Mya and Ellie both play basketball, and both said they try to do some of the things Clark does on the court, like shoot long 3s.

    “But I’m not as good as her,” Ellie said.

    Kelly Jared of Manchester, Iowa, said she likes everything about Clark and expects her impact on the women’s game to endure.

    “She’s taken it to a new level,” Jared said. “The aspirations and goals that the current players and future players have, she has set that bar way up in the sky. And it’s perfect, because they will work to attain them. As as far as the fans, there’s excitement for the people who never watched women’s basketball. My son isn’t a basketball fan, but he watched Caitlin last year and he was sold. He absolutely loves her.”

    Unlike Sunday’s loss at Nebraska, when Fox drew almost 2 million viewers for the game, this one was streamed on Peacock.

    Plum set the previous NCAA record in 2017 as a senior at Washington. Clark’s next target is the all-time major women’s college scoring record of 3,649 points by Kansas star Lynette Woodard from 1977-81. During Woodard’s era, women’s sports were governed by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. Pearl Moore of Francis Marion holds the overall women’s record with 4,061 points from 1975-79.

    “I understand the magnitude of this,” Clark said. “It’s come along with how my four years have gone, and it’s crazy looking back on how fast everything has gone. I’m really thankful and grateful.”

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    Grant McHill

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  • Ohio State climbs to No. 2, Stanford up to No. 3 behind unbeaten South Carolina in women’s AP Top 25

    Ohio State climbs to No. 2, Stanford up to No. 3 behind unbeaten South Carolina in women’s AP Top 25

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    Ohio State is up to No. 2 in The Associated Press Top 25 women’s basketball poll, matching the best ranking in school history.

    The Buckeyes, who were fifth last week, have won 11 straight games and their only losses this season have come to USC, UCLA and Michigan. The Buckeyes started as No. 7 in the preseason poll before falling to 20th on Jan. 1. They were 18th on Jan. 15 and have been on the rise ever since.

    South Carolina remained the unanimous No. 1 choice, grabbing all 35 first-place votes again in Monday’s poll after routing Missouri and then-No. 11 UConn. The Gamecocks did it without star center Kamilla Cardoso, who was playing for Brazil in the Olympic qualifying tournament.

    Stanford moved up three places to No. 3. Iowa dropped to fourth and Texas climbed to fifth.

    It’s the sixth consecutive week that there’s a different No. 2 team in the poll after Iowa blew a double-digit lead to Nebraska on Sunday. Caitlin Clark, who is eight points short of the NCAA record for career scoring, was scoreless in the fourth quarter.

    The Hawkeyes weren’t the only top five team to lose last week. N.C. State dropped three spots to sixth after falling to Virginia Tech. Colorado fell four spots to eighth after a loss at home to Oregon State. Kansas State remained seventh.

    UCLA and USC stayed in ninth and 10th.

    This is the first time since Week 9 of last season that no new team entered the poll.

    Oregon State made the biggest leap, moving up six spots to 11th after sweeping Utah and Colorado. The Beavers are currently third in the Pac-12 standings behind Stanford and the Buffaloes. They have won five straight and host UCLA and USC this week.

    The six different teams in the No. 2 spot is unusual, though there was a stretch in 2021 when a different team held the spot for seven straight weeks. This season, UCLA and Iowa both held the spot twice before losing. Kansas State had the slot for a week before a loss. It’s Ohio State’s turn. The Buckeyes had a two-week run at No. 2 last year in January before losing. Ohio State hosts Nebraska this week.

    No. 18 Louisville finished off a difficult part of its schedule that saw the Cardinals face four consecutive Top 25 teams. They went 2-2 against them after falling to Syracuse on Sunday. Jeff Walz’s team split two games with the Orange sandwiched around a loss to N.C. State and victory over Notre Dame.

    The Pac-12, which has been the most dominant conference so far this season, has five teams in the first 11 and six ranked in the Top 25 overall. The ACC and Big 12 are next with five teams each. The Big 12 has three and the Big East and SEC each have two. The Ivy and West Coast each have one.

    ___

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  • Caitlin Clark’s green-light range made her the gold standard in women’s college basketball

    Caitlin Clark’s green-light range made her the gold standard in women’s college basketball

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    IOWA CITY, Iowa — It’s impossible to pinpoint the exact moment when it was determined in Iowa that any shot that left Caitlin Clark’s hands was not just a reasonable shot, but also a good shot. Because there are green lights, and then there are green lights. And Clark has matter-of-factly operated in the latter for much of her career.

    But there’s a solid argument to be made that it was Feb. 6, 2022.

    It was Clark’s sophomore season, and while she had been putting up big numbers, she wasn’t yet considered the one-woman wrecking crew that she has now become. To get to that level of lore, a player needs to not just throw the rocks but slay Goliath. And at that point, though she was a massive scorer, she was on a team that hadn’t yet taken down the best opponents. The Hawkeyes were 1-9 against top-25 teams in her career and they were on the road facing No. 6 Michigan.

    She started the game with a step-back from the free throw line and followed up with a pull-up triple. She tossed in some drives and more mid-ranges, but the real treat came when she began hitting logo 3s during the fourth quarter as the Hawkeyes (read: Clark) attempted to pull off the upset. In one 92-second span she hit three transition 3s, the final while being swarmed by Michigan defenders who Clark put on skates. She finished with 46 points. Though Iowa still lost, something in that night shifted.

    As the broadcasters shouted through their mics after yet another logo triple, “What did she do? What did she just do?” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder walked calmly along the sideline, not even surprised or elated enough to uncross her arms. Without context, she simply looks like a coach saying same old, same old as she turned to her bench.

    “At first, when you’re coaching her, it’s kind of entertaining in practice when she takes some of those and makes some of those shots. But then in games as the coach, you’re thinking, ‘Oof, that’s not advised,’ ” Bluder said. “But there’s the point where you realize, ‘She’s different than everyone else and she can actually make these at a pretty alarming rate.’

    “There was a shift in my mind,” she added. “At that point it was like, ‘OK, we’re going to go with this.’”

    “This” as in: For Clark, anything goes.

    And since Feb. 6, 2022, this has worked pretty well for both Clark and Iowa. The senior is now 39 points shy of the NCAA women’s basketball scoring record, and the Hawkeyes, who slayed South Carolina — the Goliath of women’s basketball — in last season’s Final Four, are now recognized nationally as a powerhouse and firmly nationally ranked No. 2 this season behind the Gamecocks.

    Clark is a recognized name outside of the women’s basketball world, a player who is shadowed by security officers before and after games and at public events. She has NIL partnerships with Nike, State Farm and Gatorade. She is the presumptive No. 1 pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft if she declares, and the biggest headache for opposing coaches in women’s college hoops if she opts to return for her fifth year.


    Ask coaches who’ve faced her (or who fear they could down the line), and they’ll all explain the same thing: You don’t stop her. You might slow her down, you might make her more inefficient, but there is no stopping Clark. When Clark dropped those 46 points on Michigan in 2022, Wolverine coach Kim Barnes Arico said after the game, “I didn’t even know what the heck was going on.”

    That might be the most impressive part of her run toward the scoring record — Clark’s unwavering consistency. She has never missed a game. In 124 outings at Iowa, she has failed to score in double digits only once. As she has stretched her range over the past four seasons, her field goal percentages have steadily risen. “Her consistency is off the charts,” Bluder said Thursday night after Clark scored 27 points in a victory against Penn State. “For her to do this day after day, night after night, sold out arenas, chasing records, for her to be this consistent is incredible. Everybody has a bad night. We all have bad nights. Caitlin doesn’t have bad nights.”

    As teams have thrown new and different defensive looks at her, she has continued to outpace whatever opponents can create. Double her, and she finds the angle. Crowd her, and she rises above to hit the shot. Throw the kitchen sink at her only to find out she can hit logo 3s and do dishes at the same time.

    Of the top-10 scorers in Division I history, only two averaged more than 25 points during their entire college careers (current record-holder Kelsey Plum: 25.4; Elena Delle Donne: 26.7).

    Clark has averaged 28.1.

    This season, fans from across the Big Ten have shelled out hundreds of dollars to get their butts in conference arenas in the hopes that their “home” team might be met with a 46-point drubbing from the 6-foot guard just so they, too, can have The Caitlin Clark Experience.

    Under the microscope, Clark hasn’t wavered either. Her worst game this season — a 24-point, six-rebound, three-assist night against Kansas State — would still be a career night for 99 percent of college basketball players.

    Said Clark after the game: “I think it shows you’ve got to come in every single day and be ready to play basketball because no matter who it is, you can beat anybody, you can lose [to] anybody. That’s a great thing about women’s basketball. That’s what makes it so fun. I’m just disappointed we didn’t really put on a great performance for our fans who came out and supported us really well.”

    GO DEEPER

    When will Caitlin Clark break the women’s college basketball all-time scoring record?

    Because when you’re watching Clark, it’s not just basketball, it’s a true performance that she’s putting on for the fans who show up with not just a hope but an expectation to be wowed and amazed. They don’t want 3s, they want logo 3s. They don’t want no-look passes, they want to see something they’ve never seen before. They want the show that Clark’s coaches and teammates have gotten in practice over the past four seasons. They don’t just want Bluder’s green light for Clark, they want her on the Autobahn for 40 minutes.

    For all that attention, Clark has not just delivered, she has been consistently great, consistently leaving viewers asking, “What did she do? What did she just do?”

    Now, she’s perhaps a few quarters away from cementing herself at the top of the NCAA women’s scoring record, a feat that for Clark — with that green light — seems as though it could be just one or two really good quarters away from becoming the scoring maestro.

    (Photo of Caitlin Clark: G Fiume / Getty Images)



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    The New York Times

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  • New ESPN, Fox, Warner Bros. streaming venture won’t solve much — at least not yet

    New ESPN, Fox, Warner Bros. streaming venture won’t solve much — at least not yet

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    LAS VEGAS — One day, the brilliant TV executives are all going to unite and put their programming under one roof. It will solve all your sports viewing problems. They will call it cable.

    This new ESPN, Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery venture is not it. At least not yet.

    There is still significance to three of the biggest brands in sports teaming up this fall to give fans another option. The Great Rebundling is upon us, but it is far from solved.

    For the consumer, you won’t need this venture-to-be-named later and, my initial bet is most of you will go with that option. The service will be owned equally by the three sides, but each partner will receive the same fee as they earn from cable or YouTubeTV, according to sources with knowledge of the agreement. Just ESPN, the singular network, receives around $12 per month from cable subscribers.

    So what does that mean for you? The estimated price for the new venture when you add ESPN, Fox and WBD Sports together likely will be around $40 to $50 per month. There probably are some sports fans who would like to save a little money with this arrangement, but it is hard to believe there are a lot.

    You already can watch nearly everything that this trio offers through places like YouTube TV for around $70 and change per month. If you want this option, it is already available, with even more channels to boot.

    After a year of talks between the three sides, there is weight in seeing these superpowers come together, and it is very understandable why they did it. It is no-risk, all-reward for them. This “sports skinny bundle” — as the cool media kids like to call it — is worth a go.

    Fox Sports moves into the sports subscription space for the first time with this baby step. They have been the ones to watch their competitors pour billions into subscription streaming as they stood on the sidelines patiently biding their time. Their executives have thought rebundling is the way to go, so this gives them an initial shot.

    ESPN has been planning to go direct-to-consumer with its entire product by 2025 with the possibility of 2024. Now, it will start this fall with tag-team partners.

    This new arrangement doesn’t deter ESPN’s previous plans. The network still intends to have a stand-alone ESPN direct-to-consumer product by next year. Plus, it still could forge ahead with an equity partnership with the NFL or other leagues and/or digital players.

    WBD Sports has an always-underrated menu of rights to bring to the new product, from the NBA and MLB playoffs to March Madness.


    The new sports streaming venture is a step toward rebundling sports rights, but an incomplete one. Sunday’s Super Bowl on CBS, for instance, would not be on the platform. (Ethan Miller / Getty Images)

    But the reason these entities don’t have anything complete here just yet is the exclusion of other major players — like CBS, for example.

    This “sports skinny bundle” is a little too skinny to include Patrick Mahomes, Christian McCaffrey and Taylor Swift this weekend, as CBS has the Super Bowl this year. More problematic when you compare this new product to YouTube: If you want to watch March Madness, the CBS games will not be on it. It will not be one-stop shopping.

    The significance of this deal could increase down the road, as the names on the press release suggested. The quotes were from the top — Disney’s Bob Iger, Fox’s Lachlan Murdoch and WBD’s David Zaslav.

    However, if they want to fight the nearly unlimited pockets of Amazon, Apple or Netflix, if those digital behemoths become even more serious about sports rights, Iger, Murdoch and Zaslav could have a stronger hand as a trio.

    The new entity will have its own CEO, and it is said it will operate independently. His or her bosses, though, will still be Iger, Murdoch and Zaslav, so how independent will it be? Where could it lead in the future? Will they be able to get along? If the questions can be answered positively, it could lead to something even bigger.

    For you, the fan, maybe this new CEO will find a way to put everything you want to watch under one simple service. Until then, this venture won’t change that much for most of you.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Andrew Marchand: Sports media is my passion, and I can’t wait for what’s next

    (Photo of Fox Sports’ Michael Strahan interviewing the San Francisco 49ers’ Christian McCaffrey after last month’s NFC Championship Game: Kevin Sabitus / Getty Images)



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  • Caitlin Clark moves into No. 2 on NCAA scoring list as No. 3 Iowa tops Northwestern 110-74

    Caitlin Clark moves into No. 2 on NCAA scoring list as No. 3 Iowa tops Northwestern 110-74

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    EVANSTON, Ill. — Caitlin Clark cruised right by Jackie Stiles and Kelsey Mitchell. Next up is Kelsey Plum.

    That’s the only name above Clark on the NCAA women’s basketball scoring list.

    Clark collected 35 points, 10 assists and six rebounds in front of a sellout crowd at Welsh-Ryan Arena, leading No. 3 Iowa to a 110-74 victory over Northwestern on Wednesday night.

    Three weeks after passing Brittney Griner, Clark took down two more big names in women’s hoops. She passed Stiles for third on the NCAA list when she made a 3-pointer with 2:04 left in the first quarter. She moved ahead of Ohio State’s Mitchell when she converted a layup with 4:58 left in the first half, making her the career scoring leader for the Big Ten.

    Clark finished the night with 3,424 points, departing to a big ovation with 4:23 remaining. Plum, who starred at Washington from 2013-17, tops the women’s Division I scoring list with 3,527 points.

    “I think the coolest thing is just the names that I get to be around,” Clark said. “Those are people that I grew up watching, especially Kelsey Plum, Brittney Griner, Kelsey Mitchell. Those are really, really great players.”

    Cheered on by a crowd of 7,039 filled with Iowa colors and dotted with Clark shirts, the senior guard went 11 for 22 from the field and 10 for 10 at the free-throw line. It was her 13th game this season with at least 30 points.

    But it was her passing that really stood out. She made a nice pass ahead to Hannah Stuelke for a fast-break layup in the second quarter, and she found Sydney Affolter for a backdoor layup in the third.

    “This was one that was definitely circled on my calendar, just because I know the amount of Iowa fans in the Chicago area,” Clark said. “So I was super excited to come here. I love this gym.”

    Stuelke had 17 points and nine rebounds for Iowa (20-2, 9-1 Big Ten), which earned its second straight win since a 100-92 overtime loss at Ohio State on Jan. 21. Kate Martin added 16 points, and Gabbie Marshall finished with 12 on 4-for-5 shooting from 3.

    Northwestern (7-14, 2-8) lost its fifth straight game. Melannie Daley scored 19 points for the Wildcats, and Hailey Weaver finished with 13.

    “I thought it was going to be a much better game than what it was,” said Paige Mott, who finished with 10 points. “We didn’t show up to play for 40 minutes.”

    LOOKING BACK

    Clark has been limited to single digits just once in her collegiate career, when she scored eight points in a 77-67 loss at Northwestern on Jan. 9, 2021.

    BIG PICTURE

    Iowa: Led by Clark, the Hawkeyes had 28 assists against just five turnovers. They also enjoyed a 42-30 rebounding advantage.

    “I think we did a better job of rebounding in the second half,” coach Lisa Bluder said. “I love 28 assists on five turnovers. Really good numbers there.”

    Northwestern: Daley was 8 for 17 from the field in almost 24 1/2 minutes, and coach Joe McKeown said she should be in the mix for the Big Ten’s Sixth Player of the Year award.

    “We really like Mel’s pop coming off the bench,” he said.

    UP NEXT

    Iowa visits Maryland on Saturday night.

    Northwestern hosts Wisconsin on Sunday.

    ___

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  • The men who practice against Caitlin Clark can’t stop her either

    The men who practice against Caitlin Clark can’t stop her either

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    It’s a little after 11 a.m. on an unnervingly cold December day, and Isaac Prewitt exhales. Hands on hips, cheeks puffed out, the whole deal. His morning had been relatively easy for a while: Play dummy defense against pick-and-rolls; needle his friend about an incoming shipment of Gatorade Fit drinks; run some zone offense. A graduate student, whiling away winter break in a gym, doing a job that’s never work.

    For the last few minutes, though, his job stinks.

    Because his job is Caitlin Clark.

    He wears a blue scout-team pinnie and pursues his pal with the Gatorade hook-up during an Iowa women’s basketball practice, slaloming around bodies trying to bump him off course, doing what he can to prevent a generationally gifted scorer from, well, scoring. At one point, Prewitt challenges a Clark 3-pointer so aggressively that his fingers interlock with Clark’s on her follow-through. She makes it anyway. Prewitt laughs.

    Male practice players have been around women’s basketball for at least a half-century, mimicking the opposition’s schemes and personnel. They’re generally in the gym to help, not to win, often getting nothing except cardio for their effort. But unfair fights are one thing. How about a 6-foot-4 Stanford forward with an impossible wingspan and deceptive speed? A teenage prodigy at USC with a bottomless bag of answers? The Iowa guard who might score more points than any player in college ever has?

    What, in fact, do you do about all that?

    For starters, you keep coming back for more. After that deep breath, Prewitt lines up across from Clark. “Talk to me, talk to me,” he calls out, wary of a screen. It comes. Help defense does not. He lunges at Clark as she hoists another 3-pointer. She cashes it. And Isaac Prewitt throws his hands in the air.

    Iowa coach Lisa Bluder has seen this before, and seen enough. “Let’s let blue get a drink,” she says.

    In 1974, eight years before the NCAA even began to sponsor women’s basketball, Pat Summitt took over as Tennessee’s head coach. She signed up men to compete as practice players immediately. “The most natural thing in the world for me,” Summitt told Sports Illustrated a quarter-century later. Thing is, the Hall of Fame coach didn’t claim the idea as hers. No one seems to know who came up with it, only that it’s been a ubiquitous and useful resource for women’s hoops as far as they can remember.

    “They’re essential to our success,” says Virginia Tech coach Kenny Brooks, a few months removed from a Final Four run in 2023. “We don’t have the budget that when we get rings, they do. But I wish we could. I really do. They’re that important.”

    Enough that, these days, they’re often recruits of a different sort. Scouted not in grassroots showcases but in intramural runs at the campus rec center. Wooed not with letters and photo shoots but via want ads on social media.

    At South Carolina, Denton Rohde went from standard incoming student to guarding future No. 1 pick Aliyah Boston and now 6-7 center Kamilla Cardoso, all thanks to a Facebook post his mom saw. (“We like tall freshmen,” Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley told the 6-6 Rohde at his first workout.) Hasani Spann had Division III offers, opted for an academic full ride to Stanford, got directed to the women’s hoops practice squad by a men’s assistant coach and now chases Hannah Jump around the 3-point arc or tangles with two-time All-American Cameron Brink on the block. Jared Wilson went from pickup games at Southern Cal’s Lyon Recreational Center to trying out for the club team to guarding JuJu Watkins, the nation’s top freshman, whose precocious talent has drawn the likes of Kevin Hart and LeBron James to home games. “I had no idea,” Wilson says, “it would totally consume me.”

    “We always say time doesn’t exist when we’re in there,” says Rohde, who’s now a senior. “School doesn’t matter. Whatever’s stressing you out – drama in your personal life, whether you’re down that month – it just doesn’t matter. You’re focused, you’re practicing, you have the player you’re scouting for, you have plays you have to know. You’re trying to compete in every single drill and you’re playing a team that is quite literally the best team in the country. There’s just no other feeling like it.”

    A fair enough summary of what they get out of it, besides getting cooked.

    Most played at least through high school. (Prewitt, in fact, logged one season at NAIA Dordt University before transferring to Iowa.) They are good enough to be told to hold back, occasionally; after Rohde once scored for the scout team on a Eurostep reverse, South Carolina’s coaches reminded him: Your player is a post. You cannot do that. Some, like a trio at Southern Cal, use it as an entry point to careers in the sport. One of Brooks’ former practice players, Aaron Smith, is now an NBA referee. But regardless of their trajectory relative to the game, reckoning with the end of the competitive line can be a direct hit to the feels. These tours of duty delay the inevitable. “It was great to find a way to still be on the court, pumping my blood,” Spann says. “The girls? Oh, they hate you. They hate if they lose to you. Our primary job is to get them better, but getting them better is not giving them leeway. It’s not letting them do what they want.”

    An itch, scratched daily. “It’s hard for us to check our ego at the door,” says Will McIntire, who shares Caitlin Clark duty at Iowa while aspiring to a coaching career in women’s hoops. “That’s the best part about it. If we’re whupping the girls one day, we’re getting buckets on them, and some days they’re getting buckets on us and we’re chatting back and forth – (the coaches) eat it up. They love to have that competitive energy.”

    The utility for the programs is plain. Everyone gets quality reps against theoretically bigger or stronger or quicker or more explosive bodies without getting hurt. Down-the-roster players don’t waste time learning plays only for scout-team purposes. “That isn’t helping them be better Iowa players,” as Bluder puts it. And over a long season, it mitigates teammate-on-teammate wear-and-tear. “Elizabeth Kitley doesn’t need to practice two to three hours a day, getting every rep,” Brooks says of his All-America center at Virginia Tech. Instead, Brooks can work through a full seven- or eight-player rotation, both to build chemistry and ease up on legs.

    The guys take the beating. The women take breathers. “It’s a huge help,” says Stanford’s Brink, who otherwise would be colliding with 6-3 teammate Kiki Iriafen, the Cardinal’s second-leading scorer. “Kiki and I, things can definitely get heated when we’re going against each other. For me to get a break guarding her, and for her to practice guarding guards, it’s great. They help us expand our games and make us better, for sure.”

    Often, of course, at their own expense.

    “In short, it’s not going too well for me,” says Gavin McDonnell, a Stanford practice player who, pushing 6-5, spends most of the season on a very perilous Brink. “Just kind of a massive nightmare.”

    The job is about what you’d expect. In certain locales – the 2023-24 season features nine players who earned All-America nods last year – it’s perhaps as onerous as it’s ever been.

    Rohde’s initiation at South Carolina came by way of three-time All-American Aliyah Boston – “She was patient, smart and had a counter to anything you could throw at her,” he says – but the days, and the opposition, remain long. The 6-7 Cardoso has filled the space vacated by Boston, shooting 60.3 percent and averaging 21.6 points and 16.3 boards per 40 minutes. Sagging off and giving Cardoso a midrange look is no longer an option for Rohde. Nor is betting that she won’t put the ball on the deck. All while she’s enhanced her capacity to baffle Rohde at the rim, particularly with one move in which Cardoso essentially goes under the hoop and fades away, erasing all angles for a possible block. “I’ve played against people who are in the NBA, like, right now,” Rohde says. “I played against many 6-8, 6-10 Division I players and I’ve never had as many moments with a player where there’s absolutely nothing I could have done to block that.”

    His counterparts on the other side of the country can sympathize. Brink currently produces at a preposterous rate of 31.5 points, 20.4 rebounds and 5.7 blocks per 40 minutes, all of which are career-bests. “You pick your poison with her,” McDonnell says. “It’s so hard to guard her closely and not foul. She’s super-quick, too. … She’ll slip right by you.” McDonnell has the height and reach and frame to challenge Brink with physicality and contest shots – and it’s futile. “She usually just scores,” he says with a laugh.

    These are the known quantities, though. No one’s opening a mystery box daily. What’s coming is clear.

    It’s a little different when you see the comet right before it passes the sun and starts to glow.

    JuJu Watkins arrived at Southern Cal as the nation’s No. 1 recruit last summer, as conspicuous as prospects get. Everyone wanted to see the video highlights cut-and-pasted into real life. On the first day of workouts, Watkins crossed over a practice player so badly that Reagan Griffin Jr., another squad member, thought to himself: Is it really like that? When the women and men scrimmaged in the preseason, and Watkins scored six points on three possessions against a 6-4 former California high school state champion, the answer was clear.

    “Homey is looking at me from the court like, what’s going on?” Griffin Jr. remembers. “At that point, everyone knew who the best player in the gym is.”

    Still, she’s 18. She may be a budding genius with endless counters – “You can’t ever really stop her because her bag is so deep,” says Wilson, who is her primary practice foil – but she’s nevertheless budding. She may be physical – on the first day Yusuf Ali guarded her, the first-year practice player remembers Watkins nearly knocking him over when she engaged her off-hand – but she’s also growing.

    Early on, Ali could fake a stunt when Watkins drove, making her think a kick-out was available, and then jump the passing lane for a steal. It’s why Watkins takes a moment after a recent practice to find the right word to describe her foils. Annoying, she says, isn’t quite it. Very active is what she settles on. “It definitely forces your IQ to really show up in moments where the defense does have somewhat of an advantage, just making sure you’re making the right play every time,” Watkins says. “To get that in practice every day just makes the game that much easier.” Watkins indeed learned with each noon-run-at-the-YMCA trick. And then the fakes stopped working.

    “She’s gotten harder and harder to guard each week,” Ali says. “Each time I’ll try something new, she’ll have a counter for it the next practice.”

    This is what Southern Cal’s practice squad gets in addition to its troubles: fascination. The idea that Watkins is all of this, and yet not what she’ll be. The satisfaction in helping her figure it all out.

    “On a day-to-day basis,” Griffin Jr. says, “you feel like you’re watching greatness.”

    About 1,800 miles east, they can relate.


    Giving Caitlin Clark a good practice look means being physical and cramping her space. But that requires catching her first.  (Kirk Irwin / Getty Images)

     

    It’s fair to wonder why Will McIntire and Isaac Prewitt choose to live in an Iowa City time loop – stand in front of the No. 22 bus, get run over, wake up and do it all over again – beyond the hazard pay they earn after being promoted to team managers.

    Then you hear about one Monday in December.

    It’s McIntire and Caitlin Clark, matched up in a scrimmage period during preparation for a game against Loyola-Chicago. McIntire hits a jumper with the shot-clock expiring. Clark protests vehemently. Insists the player McIntire is supposed to mimic wouldn’t take that shot. McIntire counters that she will, if Clark leaves her that open.

    “And then she comes down and calls me a bitch,” McIntire says, smiling in a Carver-Hawkeye Arena courtside seat. “I’m like, ‘What? Say it again! Say it again!’ She said it again. And I was running back, laughing. Oh, I loved it.”

    The planet didn’t tilt off its axis. Iowa’s coaches didn’t stop practice, aghast. Clark and McIntire ate lunch together after, like nothing happened. A practice player’s job, at Iowa, isn’t guarding Caitlin Clark. The job is dealing with Caitlin Clark. Every day. She will take jump shots and pot shots. She will burn you and serve burns. Everyone in the operation understands the dynamic by now, nobody more than Prewitt and McIntire, who effectively trade days of tying themselves to the track. Everyone understands the best thing they can do for a superstar transcending the sport in real time is give as good as they get. Or try.

    Try to knock Clark off balance, in every way, because every opponent is going to have the same plan. “I love it,” Clark says, leaning against a wall in an arena tunnel and, notably, smiling. “We should talk crap with each other. They should be super competitive. Sometimes I joke with them: ‘Guys, there’s no NBA scouts here today watching you. I’m sorry.’ But that’s how hard they go.”

    What’s become more than a working relationship – Prewitt and McIntire live in the same complex as the players and socialize with them regularly, and McIntire is roommates with sixth-year wing Kate Martin – likely makes it easier to go harder on each other, with no sour feelings. “Off the court,” Clark says, “they’re like our best friends and brothers.” But siblings typically don’t grasp the concept of mercy. So it goes with one of the premier shotmakers in college basketball.

    Iowa opponents get that treatment two or three times a season at most. Prewitt and McIntire volunteer for it daily. “It’s the best job on campus, in terms of every life skill,” McIntire says. “You learn how to handle everything.”

    Ask about basketball-specific tactics they use to make their on-floor life less difficult, and they exchange weary grins. “It’s not easy to guard her,” McIntire deadpans. “She runs around a lot.” Clark presents an endurance test; giving her a good practice look means being physical and cramping her space. But that requires catching her first. “It doesn’t get talked about enough – she’s the fastest player on the court, with the ball, that I’ve seen,” Prewitt says. “She’s the fastest player downhill at any time.”

    Objective No. 1, then, is to not let Clark get involved. “You’re trying to deny and keep the ball out of her hands,” Bluder says, “because you’re stupid if you don’t.” It’s a quixotic quest. Yet inside Iowa’s walls, there’s a method to it: hone Clark’s all-around production that much more – she leads the nation in scoring (32 points per game) and ranks second with 7.6 assists per night – and set the tone for team success. “I want to try to get her to get everyone else involved and see that she has all these other pieces around her,” McIntire says. “I love watching her share the ball, because I know she’s going to get hers anyway.”

    Two days in December confirm this.

    It’s the ramp-up to Loyola-Chicago, the last game before a holiday break. Across a couple practices, Clark hits the 3-pointer with Prewitt’s fingers interlaced with hers. She staggers the defense with a hesitation dribble and drives to the rim for a bucket. She runs McIntire into a screen but doesn’t quite extricate herself from traffic, wobbling a little off-balance … and then she banks in a floater from about 15 feet regardless. Everyone shakes their heads. Bluder drops her hands to her knees, laughing. Clark jogs off the floor to get some hand sanitizer, because she hit the shot with a runny nose, to boot.

    “There’s a lot of ‘F yous’ thrown back at her when she makes those,” McIntire says.

    “It’s a mix of, ‘Damn, that was sick,’” Prewitt says. “And also, gosh, I want to get around that screen better so she can’t get that look.”

    It’s ego subjugation for the greater good. Show up fully invested in stopping a superstar … and only occasionally doing so. “I think they think it’s kind of cool,” Bluder says. Of course, when McIntire misses a fast-break layup against Iowa’s second unit, he draws a roar of pure schadenfreude from the starters on the sideline.

    “Aw,” Clark says as McIntire sprints back. “He’s mad.”

    It’s all in something like fun, underpinned by appreciation. Clark will rewatch games and get a kick out of the guys’ overreaction from the bench to big shots or massive plays. “It’s really cute,” she says. She’s also gifted Iowa’s practice players Bose headphones and Nike shoes and intends to restock Prewitt on his beloved Gatorade Fit drinks, sharing the bounty of an elevated profile with a few good men. “Going against a little bit bigger, stronger, faster guards – for me, personally, that’s the biggest thing,” Clark says. “They give me good looks. Things I’m going to see in the game, and maybe even making it harder than what I’m going to see.”

    A few practice players trickle down the arena ramp and catch her eye. As they pass by, Clark announces that she’s talking trash about them.

    All Iowa’s star gets is a smile in return.

    “I love it,” Clark says again, like she can’t say it enough. “They’re perfect players for us to go against.”

    (Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Courtesy of USC, South Carolina; Brian Ray / Iowa)



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  • South Carolina keeps grip on No. 1 in AP women’s poll as top teams stumble; Kansas State up to 2

    South Carolina keeps grip on No. 1 in AP women’s poll as top teams stumble; Kansas State up to 2

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    South Carolina remained the clear No. 1 team in the country and No. 2 Kansas State matched its best ranking ever after a chaotic week that saw nearly half of the AP Top 25 lose at least one game.

    The Gamecocks received all 35 first-place votes Monday in the latest Associated Press women’s basketball poll after their 76-70 road victory over then-No. 9 LSU.

    While Dawn Staley’s team stayed unbeaten, many other top schools stumbled. LSU was one of five top 10 teams to lose a game last week. Overall, a dozen ranked teams had at least one defeat.

    Kansas State now has its highest ranking since Nov. 25, 2002. The Wildcats have won 15 straight games, the last few without star center Ayoka Lee. She is sidelined for a few more weeks with an ankle injury. Kansas State has a tough stretch ahead with games at Oklahoma and Texas.

    Iowa moved back up to third as Caitlin Clark moved closer to the all-time scoring record in women’s college basketbal. She is in fourth place with 3,389 points and could pass Jackie Stiles (3,393) and Kelsey Mitchell (3,402) in the Hawkeyes’ next game on Wednesday at Northwestern. She is 138 points behind Kelsey Plum’s record mark of 3,527.

    Stanford and North Carolina State followed Iowa in the poll. Colorado, which split a pair of games in Oregon, fell three spots to sixth. UCLA dropped five places to seventh after an overtime loss to Utah and a defeat at home to Washington State.

    Ohio State vaulted up four spots to eighth while LSU stayed put at nine. Indiana was 10th.

    UConn and Texas, which both were in the top 10 last week, lost to Notre Dame and Oklahoma, respectively. The Huskies dropped three places to 11 and Texas two spots to 12th.

    Princeton re-entered the poll at No. 25 while riding a 10-game winning streak. The Tigers, who were ranked for one week in November, are 15-3 on the season with losses to UCLA, Indiana and Rhode Island. Princeton plays at home against Yale and Brown this weekend. The Tigers replaced Florida State in the rankings. The Seminoles lost to Duke by 42 points.

    Oregon State jumped up seven spots to No. 18 after a stellar weekend with victories over Colorado and Utah. The Beavers, who had their first top-five win since 2019 in the victory over the then-No. 3 Buffaloes, have won five of their last six games. They play rival Oregon in their lone contest this week.

    ___

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  • Why Caitlin Clark could pose a dilemma for Team USA at the Olympics

    Why Caitlin Clark could pose a dilemma for Team USA at the Olympics

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    USA Basketball will be seeking its eighth consecutive Olympic gold medal this summer with the first step coming at the Olympic qualifying tournament in Antwerp, Belgium, from Feb. 8-11. The 12-player roster for that tournament will be the first approximation of the team that will defend the Americans’ gold medal in Paris.

    Based on the 18 players who have been invited to the national team camp from Feb. 2-4 in Brooklyn, N.Y., the committee has a terrifically challenging task to select that final roster, a decision that will likely be further complicated by the current collegians — primarily Caitlin Clark, but USA Basketball veterans Paige Bueckers and Cameron Brink could also factor in here — who turn pro at the end of the 2023-24 season.

    The final roster will ultimately make a statement about what the committee values: youth and the future or experience and proven success. USA Basketball has generally balanced old and young on the international team so that the younger players can carry the torch and preserve the culture. Including — or not including — Clark poses a unique dilemma with the wealth of options before the committee.

    On the opposite end of the spectrum from Clark is Diana Taurasi, one of eight Olympians from Tokyo in 2021 who is back in the national team pool. Taurasi is seeking to become the first basketball player of either gender to compete in six Olympics. She would also be the oldest basketball Olympian ever and the third American woman of any sport to participate in six games. Assuming Taurasi is healthy, she is a lock to return to the roster. The 41-year-old even participated in the USA Basketball college barnstorming tour in November against Tennessee and Duke, which presumably was not compulsory for a player with her pedigree.

    Taurasi is joined by Ariel Atkins, Napheesa Collier, Chelsea Gray, Brittney Griner, Jewell Loyd, Breanna Stewart and A’ja Wilson from the Tokyo team. Atkins is the only one of those returnees — other than Griner, who has extenuating circumstances, and is another lock to suit up in red, white and blue if she so chooses — whose play has declined since the last Olympiad, but considering she also played for the USA during the 2022 FIBA World Cup, Atkins will likely be prioritized by the committee. However, her status as a 2024 Olympian is probably the most tenuous of these eight players.

    That leaves at most five, and likely four, spots for new blood, and the competition is fierce. Kahleah Copper, Sabrina Ionescu, Betnijah Laney, Kelsey Plum and Alyssa Thomas were all additionally part of the World Cup squad. Ionescu averaged the fewest minutes in Australia, but she, Thomas and Plum all have been All-WNBA selections within the past two seasons, with the latter two finishing top-five in MVP voting. Plum’s history with the three-on-three team should also give her a leg up with the committee, which brings us to her fellow gold medalists in that sport’s debut in 2021: Allisha Gray and Jackie Young. Both players seem too good to be left off of the roster, especially Young, but that is always the case with the American national team.

    All seven of those players would be reasonable selections for the Olympics, and that doesn’t even include Aliyah Boston, Rhyne Howard and Arike Ogunbowale — three of the younger camp invites. All Boston has done is put together one of the most decorated college careers in recent memory, plus collect multiple gold medals for the U.S. at youth levels, while earning rookie of the year honors and starting in the WNBA All-Star Game. Frankly, Boston seems like another lock, filling in the sixth frontcourt spot behind Wilson, Stewart, Griner, Thomas and Collier. Howard and Ogunbowale — both All-Stars who would be the leading scorers on just about any other national team in the world — are probably on the outside looking in until the 2028 Olympics.

    Then, there’s the youth question. The No. 1 picks in the 2004, 2008 and 2016 WNBA drafts made the Olympic teams as rookies (Nneka Ogwumike’s omission in 2012 was curious then, and her absence from subsequent Olympic rosters has made that snub even more ridiculous in hindsight), and a similarly loaded draft class is on deck to carry that tradition. The youngsters take their place at the end of the roster and then grow into the future leaders. Wilson has talked about learning from Taurasi and Sue Bird how to set the standard, which she put into practice along with Stewart at the last World Cup.

    It would make sense for Clark to be the latest ingénue to take her place as Team USA’s 12th player, but with the 2004 No. 1 pick Taurasi still kicking, there may not be enough space. Perhaps the committee will take solace in Boston representing the current generation, while a cohort of older guards compete in the backcourt. Deciding between Atkins, Copper, Allisha Gray, Ionescu, Ogunbowale, Plum and Young for what figures to be three spots will be difficult enough without adding Clark to the mix.

    Then again, the Caitlin Clark effect is real. How could USA Basketball choose not to capitalize on the rabid popularity of one of the game’s biggest stars when whoever takes her place doesn’t figure to play many minutes anyway? The Olympics are the biggest showcase of women’s basketball worldwide. A player like Clark belongs on that stage if the selection committee wants to build off the momentum the sport is generating stateside.

    There will be plenty of superstars on the national team whether Clark makes the cut or not. And the U.S. will be prohibitive favorites regardless of what combination of these players suits up in Paris. The specific composition of this roster, however, will reveal what the committee prioritizes, be it national team history, domestic success, balance of youth/veterans or the most marketable names. All of those possibilities are on the table.

    (Photo of Caitlin Clark: Marc Piscotty / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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  • Why South Carolina’s freshman sensation is wowing Magic Johnson, the NBA and college basketball

    Why South Carolina’s freshman sensation is wowing Magic Johnson, the NBA and college basketball

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    Let’s begin with the play, because what else initially comes to mind when thinking of South Carolina star freshman MiLaysia Fulwiley?

    You know the one. Against No. 10 Notre Dame, in the season opener, in Paris. Fulwiley receives an inbounds pass with just over two minutes to go until halftime and begins galloping up the floor. By the time she reaches the 3-point line, three defenders are inside the arc, but nothing is stopping her. Fulwiley picks up her dribble, goes behind the back with the ball and elevates. For a brief second, it looks as if she will attempt a scoop layup on the basket’s right side. But then, in an instant, she cradles the ball to the left and uses her right hand to flip it up with the perfect amount of spin so it falls through the hoop. “The Eiffel Tower is shaking,” ESPN’s Ryan Ruocco says on the broadcast.

    The razzle-dazzle electrifies the 3,200 spectators in attendance and hundreds of thousands watching on TV. Kevin Durant, amazed by the string of moves, tweets about it. Magic Johnson tweets it’s “the best move in all of basketball including the pros like LeBron, Steph, KD, Victor, and Jokic” and urges his 5 million followers to seek out the replay. It’s undeniably eye-popping. But to those who know Fulwiley best, the sequence isn’t surprising.

    “That play is routine for her,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley says.

    “That play, we’ve seen it 1,000 times,” her high school coach, Reggie McLain, says.

    “She’s just special. I have not seen a kid play the game the way she plays it,” adds Ashley Rivens, her grassroots coach at Team Curry.

    Although she’s only a freshman, Fulwiley has been making on-court magic in Columbia, S.C., for as long as she can remember. She grew up a 13-minute drive from the university’s campus. Long before she made Colonial Life Arena her stage, she created, and re-created, highlights in the driveway of her family’s three-bedroom home and at nearby Crane Forest Park. She’d watch YouTube videos — often of LeBron James, Columbia native Seventh Woods or other mixtape stars — grab a ball and experiment for herself. She’d tell her sisters, Zyana and Jayla, to sit on the porch and count down from five. “One day, the camera is gonna be on me and I’m gonna be like everybody else I see on YouTube,” Fulwiley says she would think to herself.

    In daylight and darkness, on a strip of concrete or surrounding grass, in front of the house or at the goal in the back, she imagined nailing buzzer-beaters. She played in the park until she could no longer see the hoop. She practiced crossover combinations and spin moves. Eventually, in high school, the 5-foot-10 guard worked on dunking. (Yes, she can throw it down.) “You are gonna be somebody special,” her mother, Phea Mixon, told her.

    Fulwiley’s highlights are a reminder, however, that just because something is routine for one person doesn’t mean it’s replicable for others. By the end of her seventh-grade season, McLain invited Fulwiley to join W.J. Keenan High’s varsity playoff run. South Carolina and Ole Miss offered her scholarships before the school year ended. As an eighth-grader, she played high school varsity full-time. Keenan won four state titles and played in five championship games with her on the roster.

    Immense talent hasn’t led to immense ego, say those who know her best. Mixon describes her daughter as humble. Staley calls Fulwiley low-key and sometimes shy. “We have to teach her that you’re not an ordinary young person,” Staley says. Fulwiley, 18, knows she has much to learn. And though she’s comfortable skying above defenders, she reminds herself to stay steady. To remain grounded, even when her aerial acrobatics go viral. “I’m in control of how I want to feel,” she says. “My mom did a great job telling me, ‘Don’t get the big head because you can lose everything just how you got it.’”

    As Fulwiley surged up ranking lists — eventually making her way to No. 13 in ESPN’s Class of 2023 — and past her defenders, Mixon often put her daughter’s opportunities over her own career in customer service. She prioritized attending Fulwiley’s tournaments and college visits. “I really wanted MiLaysia to secure her future, because once I saw how special she was, I knew that things can change,” Mixon says. Through hard work, she told her daughter, Fulwiley could accomplish what she aspired to achieve.

    Fulwiley noticed her mother’s efforts. “It means a lot to me,” she says, “just knowing that my mom cares about me enough to stop things that’s going on in her life (and) sacrifice.” Mixon can count on one hand the number of times she’s missed Fulwiley’s games in high school or college.

    Though she’s competitive off the court — McLain says Fulwiley didn’t even like to lose in PE kickball — she has largely maintained a singular focus. “Basketball has been my one and only love,” she says. In elementary school, her answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” questions was always a professional basketball player. She stood out in youth events. Fulwiley recalls attempting a 3-pointer in a boys’ church league game when she was only 6 or 7 and wondering if she was dreaming because she had tried a shot that even she thought was audacious. In the sixth grade, she scored 60 points in a game, but her team lost 71-70. She now calls her 60-piece “a waste” because of the result. Nevertheless, it brought more attention to her.

    When McLain first watched Fulwiley play, as a seventh-grader, he saw a player who stood out among her peers. He observed her elite athleticism, prodigious basketball IQ and competitiveness. A motor Fulwiley describes as “go-go-go.”

    That spring, McLain added her to the high school’s playoff roster, and she immediately dominated practices, taking over in one-on-one drills. Still, McLain adds, she was “extremely quiet.” She didn’t get fazed by the teachers, trainers and other coaches poking their heads in the gym to see her play.

    Staley says the success of her program is “based on the kids in our area.” A’ja Wilson is from Columbia. Alaina Coates is from a nearby suburb. “No one leaves the state,” Staley says, “without them making it really hard for us to say no.” The Gamecocks made it hard for Fulwiley to say no.

    As she flourished in high school and on her grassroots team, her family kept envisioning her wearing garnet and black. It was initially only a lofty aspiration, but one they hoped could be a key step to reaching the WNBA. Mixon says Staley promised to hold Fulwiley accountable and help her reach the next level. The idea of staying home in Columbia also brought added excitement because her friends and family could easily see her play. Fulwiley’s now-deceased grandfather, Charles, was a longtime Gamecocks fan. He wore the school’s apparel and had school stickers on his car. He told Fulwiley he could see her suiting up there one day. She wears No. 12 in his honor; it was his favorite number.

    One morning during Fulwiley’s second week of summer classes at South Carolina, she arrived late for a team breakfast. She says she was only two minutes behind schedule. She thought nothing would come of it. But tardiness in college, she quickly learned, was different from being late in high school. Staley told her she would sit out of a practice.

    The discipline resonated. “Stuff like that made me lock in,” Fulwiley says. She told her mother: “Dawn does not play.”

    In the weeks and months that followed, Staley has continued emphasizing the team rules. She stresses to Fulwiley the importance of being on time to class and weight training and creating pro-ready habits. Even in moments of tension, Staley reminds Fulwiley of her potential.

    “She’ll ooh and ahh us,” Staley says. “She’ll make me turn away from her because of a move she’ll make. I gotta walk away from it because it was so very good. And then she also has some things that she needs to work on that will make me scream at her. And I don’t like screaming at her because she’s got an angelic look to her. She doesn’t like to be screamed at, but certain things will hit me differently.”


    The 18-year-old has even stunned coach Dawn Staley with some of her moves.

    In those instances, Staley will correct her, often prefacing the feedback by saying, “This doesn’t mean that you’re not a generational talent.”

    In high school, Fulwiley was Keenan’s star. In college, she has starred at times, like in her 17-point, six-assist, six-steal outing against Notre Dame or in an 18-point, nine-rebound showing against Clemson. However, there have also been games when Fulwiley watched idly from the bench. She saw the floor for only three minutes in a 7-point win over North Carolina, with Staley saying Fulwiley lost her opponent a few times on defense. She played a mere 10 minutes in South Carolina’s 24-point victory over Missouri and missed all five of her field goal attempts. Yet it is then when coaches see Fulwiley’s trust in their decisions. “She really embraces the process, and I love that about her,” Staley says.

    Against Texas A&M on Sunday, Fulwiley put on perhaps her best showing. She scored 21 points in 20 minutes, exploding past defenders in the pick-and-roll on multiple occasions. Staley said Fulwiley’s confidence translated to magic. The top-ranked Gamecocks matchup against No. 9 LSU on Thursday night provides another opportunity to unearth something amazing. But Staley also stresses that “the stuff in between the spectacular plays is where (her) greatness is really going to come.” In other words, how she makes the ordinary extraordinary.

    Fulwiley says she has plenty to learn — too many things to rattle off. Staley notes Fulwiley can sometimes be unselfish to a fault and that she has room to “be in the gym a little bit more.” Fulwiley has nearly as many assists (40) as turnovers (34). Nevertheless, she takes feedback well. Coaches demonstrate something once, Staley says, and Fulwiley can execute it immediately. “She wants to be great,” Staley says. “And wanting to be great takes listening. It takes doing. It takes vulnerability.”

    Fulwiley feels grateful to be at South Carolina, soaking up knowledge from the veterans. And although her stage has changed, she has stayed attached to her roots. She has returned to Keenan three times this season to watch the Raiders play. Once, she sat on the end of their bench, and she has spoken to the players at halftime. Sure, her sister Jayla is still playing there. However, Fulwiley goes back for more than that. “They played a big part as to why I’m here today,” she says. “I owe them my support and my dedication.”

    Even with an arsenal of aerial attacks, she’s stayed tied to the ground. To her past. To her family. To Columbia. Mixon says, “I can’t tell you how many times I cried” seeing people scream her daughter’s name in Colonial Life Arena. She thinks about the sacrifices and how her father would say, “Whatever you do, you need to make time so that your daughter can follow her dreams.”

    “I’ve prayed for times like this,” Fulwiley says. And in her driveway, she prepared for times like this, too.

    (Photos of MiLaysia Fulwiley: Jacob Kupferman / Getty Images)

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  • Thompson: Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer's historic milestone deserves historic honor

    Thompson: Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer's historic milestone deserves historic honor

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    PALO ALTO, Calif. — The packed house at Maples Pavilion didn’t wait for the final horn to begin the serenade of Tara VanDerveer.

    As freshman forward Nunu Agara dribbled into the frontcourt, and Oregon State coach Scott Rueck gestured to his Beavers not to foul, what was inevitable was becoming official. The crowd rose to its feet, roaring loud enough to make this historic occasion tangible.

    VanDerveer showed up to the gym Sunday tied with Duke legend Mike Krzyzewski for the most victories in NCAA basketball history. She would leave alone at the top.

    Senior guard Hannah Jump waved for the serenade to turn up. Time expired. The 65-56 win over Oregon State — victory No. 1,203 — was in the record books. Kiki Iriafen scored a career-high 36 points, including the first two 3-pointers of her career. But her performance was just the appetizer, lathering up the crowd for the main event. VanDerveer had crested Coach K to become college basketball’s winningest coach. It was time for the house that Tara built to celebrate its architect. The foundation was now the showcase.

    The crowd began to chant with fervor: “Ta-ra! Ta-ra! Ta-ra!”

    But wait. Not so fast.

    Before Cameron Brink could dump a Gatorade bucket of gold confetti on her coach (who looked relieved it wasn’t Gatorade). Before the approximate 4-foot numbers, 1203, could be set up as props at this hoop party in Palo Alto. Before the stage could be erected and videos played and speeches given. VanDerveer walked to the other end of the sideline and hugged Rueck.

    Because you don’t get to 1,203 without consistency, without discipline born of ancient eras, without humility relevant in any age. She climbed this mountain by not skipping steps, by valuing every rep. Not even reaching the summit is worthy of a diversion from principle.

    So VanDerveer walked the line. She hugged the opposing assistant coaches. She shook the hand of every Beavers player, greeting them with a smile and a kind word. It wasn’t until she got through them all that she would allow the spotlight of the occasion to focus on her.

    Now the ultimate deflector had to accept her flowers.

    “When I think of you, one word comes to mind,” Jennifer Azzi, one of the renowned pillars of Cardinal hoops, said in a video played on the big board. “And that’s excellence.”

    This place should be called Tara Pavilion. She didn’t build it with her hands in 1969. She didn’t renovate it in 2005. But she gave it life. She made it relevant. Her teams. Her success. Her tradition.

    The last time the men’s team brought a championship here was 1942. But here wasn’t here yet. Maples wouldn’t open for another 27 years. The value of this place is centered on the standard the women’s basketball program set when VanDerveer took over in 1985. The outpouring of love has been brewed by years of teams and players worthy of affinity.

    She didn’t shy away from Stanford’s elite academic standards, which can be an obstacle to recruiting, because it absolutely fits her holistic message of work ethic.

    She has delivered three national titles, 14 Final Fours, 15 first-team All-Americans, 25 conference championships, 30 WNBA players and countless moments.

    And 1,203 wins.

    Any Mount Rushmore of basketball coaches must include a bob with bangs.

    GO DEEPER

    From piano lessons to swimming, Tara VanDerveer’s success is rooted in non-stop learning

    “We all know that beyond the stats,” Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr said in the tribute video, “beyond the wins and losses and everything else, it’s the impact you’ve had on so many young lives.”

    The significance of this moment was present in the energy. In who was present. Condoleezza Rice. Andrew Luck. Chiney Ogwumike. Azzi flew in with two kids, 6 and 3, which might be as impressive as becoming Stanford’s first Naismith National Player of the Year in 1990.

    “I’m not usually lost for words,” she said addressing the fans. “But it’s pretty impressive. All these people here. All the former players coming back.”

    A flood of former players joined the festivities. The background vocals were provided by the sea of fans in Cardinal red, many of whom have spent years watching VanDerveer mold young women while racking up victories.

    What everyone here knows is this celebration belongs in this place. This venue, this audience, this central figure are worthy of this spotlight. This neck of the woods is foundational to the sport that’s thriving at new levels.

    The torch being carried today by the likes of A’ja Wilson and Caitlin Clark, Dawn Staley and Sabrina Ionescu, got some of its spark from this lively hoops hub nestled in these manicured woods of intellectual prosperity. The story of women’s hoops cannot be told without Stanford women’s basketball. And the name Tara VanDerveer is an adjective for its quality.

    Nike commemorated VanDerveer’s accomplishment with a white bomber jacket plastered with red tally marks. One for each win. The sporty 70-year-old, still fit enough to leap off the bench and light a fire into 20-somethings, put on the jacket. She looked like racking up another 500 wins isn’t off the table.

    “I’ve had such an incredible life,” VanDerveer said on a stage erected as her pedestal. “I don’t want for anything. What I have is right here.”

    The stage was christened by Ros Gold-Onwude, who played five seasons for VanDerveer, appeared in three Final Fours and built a reputation for defense. She’s now a versatile broadcaster for ESPN and hosted the festivities. She did a Q&A with Azzi and Ogwumike.

    A video played at Maples included praise from Billie Jean King, Coach K, Staley and 2016 WNBA MVP Nneka Ogwumike. But it was Lisa Leslie crashing the Stanford party to declare herself VanDerveer’s favorite. Leslie, the USC star, played under VanDerveer in the 1996 Olympics, along with hoops royalty such as Sheryl Swoopes, Teresa Edwards, Rebecca Lobo and Staley. VanDerveer took a year off from Stanford to coach this team on a 52-0 exhibition tour that set the foundation for women’s basketball in America.

    Later in 1996, the American Basketball League launched as the nation’s first women’s pro basketball league. In 1997, the WNBA followed.

    “I’m not perfect,” VanDerveer said. “I never claimed to be perfect. We’re talking about wins, but we’ve lost a lot, too.”

    A whopping 267 games in 45 seasons. But her point is a real one. Winning 81.8 percent of her games isn’t solely why she is worthy of this moment. It’s because of the bar Stanford has represented in women’s basketball, held up by her wiry arms and vintage conviction. Those celebrating her Sunday didn’t speak of her treasure chest of victories but of her principles and modus operandi.

    “You have personally helped influence my life and the way that I move,” Leslie said in the video. “I always remember that repetition of error …”

    Leslie pointed to Chiney Ogwumike, who finished the last part of the VanDerveer truism:

    “Shows a lack of intelligence.”

    No disrespect to Roscoe Maples, whose $1.7 million donation led to the building of the original home of Stanford hoops.

    But this is Tara’s house. She built it up. She sustained it. And, as the winningest college basketball coach, she deserves it to bear her name.

    (Photo: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)

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  • From piano lessons to swimming, Tara VanDerveer's success is rooted in non-stop learning

    From piano lessons to swimming, Tara VanDerveer's success is rooted in non-stop learning

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    PALO ALTO, Calif. — Almost nothing about Tara VanDerveer’s home would imply a basketball coach, let alone one who is about to become the winningest college basketball coach ever, has resided there for nearly 30 years. The muted yellow walls and decor — several large framed florals painted years ago by a friend — are tasteful but minimal. The coffee table books are mostly National Geographic travel tomes.

    Her home gym displays some memorabilia, but the only room that might truly give it away is her “office,” a generous term as it more closely resembles a windowless walk-in closet. But this is VanDerveer’s preference — understated and neatly organized (though VanDerveer calls the office itself, generally stuffed to the brim, “a disaster”). On occasion, she’ll display on her fridge a photo of herself sitting with former Tennessee coach Pat Summitt and former UCLA and Cal State Fullerton coach Billie Moore — three Hall of Famers — as a reminder to enjoy every day. But the sparse memorabilia and occasional photo are the only slightest clues that a rather successful coach calls this place home.

    For VanDerveer, the crown jewels of her house are the seven redwood trees in the backyard. They stretch upward like forestial skyscrapers, transplanted into her property 12 years ago and grown considerably since then. Five are younger trees, but the two eldest are likely north of 70 years old, just like VanDerveer. From time to time, she finds herself walking around the backyard with her dogs, Piper and Enzo, gazing skyward, admiring the sturdy giants that have come to withstand time, drought and fire.

    “They’re beautiful trees; they’re very resilient trees,” VanDerveer says. “Their roots grow underneath and they support each other. They’re really tall, but they remind me of a team in that they’re holding each other up.”

    There were no redwoods in the Northeastern or Midwestern states where VanDerveer spent the majority of her formative years — a childhood in Massachusetts and New York, her early years in college basketball at Indiana, Idaho and Ohio State. But when she moved to Northern California in 1985 to become Stanford’s head coach, she was awestruck by the mighty redwoods.

    There’s no definitive explanation why redwoods grow so tall. Part of it is their lifespans; some age up to 2,000 years largely due to their bark, which protects them from disease, and a thick husk that shields them against fires. They are completely different from most other trees in that way. But why they reach such heights? No one knows exactly.

    In the 1960s when author John Steinbeck traveled across the country and came upon Northern California, he wrote, “The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. … From them comes silence and awe. It’s not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.”

    VanDerveer sees her best teams as these redwoods. Players who stood on their own, but whose roots stretched underground and toward one another, supporting each other while withstanding drought and fire, becoming ambassadors of a changing game. If that is so, then she is that mysterious element answering the question: How do they grow so tall?

    GO DEEPER

    From Idaho to iconic titles: Top 10 Tara VanDerveer moments as Stanford coach nears all-time wins record

    “It was her high standards, which start with herself,” says Jennifer Azzi, who played for VanDerveer at Stanford from 1986-90 and won a gold medal with VanDerveer in the 1996 Olympics. “If there’s one word that describes her it’s excellence. Excellence in every single thing she does and attempts. … That has never changed over the years. She has never compromised herself or her values.”

    Few coaches have lasted as long on a sideline as she, and they only got there by finding these special players and developing teams. Mostly, they stay by winning. It was maybe the first lesson she learned in basketball. With no girls’ teams to play on, the golden rule she learned during pick-up games at the park: Winner stays. It remains true in college coaching, too.

    On Sunday, she could pass former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski as the winningest college basketball coach of all time with 1,203 wins. Even to her, that number is hard to comprehend. She didn’t set out to get to this pinnacle, but here she is. For every 100 wins, Stanford presented her with a custom-painted basketball. Eventually, she had so many she had to move them from a bookshelf to a wall shelf, and now that shelf — which stretches across the full length of her office — houses all 12 basketballs. It can’t get any longer at this point, so she just keeps moving the basketballs closer together.

    She has 17 30-win seasons, more than the rest of the Pac-12 schools combined. She has won three national titles and led the Cardinal to 14 Final Fours. She has been named the national coach of the year five times and the Pac-12 coach of the year 17 times. VanDerveer has won more games than 344 Division I programs.


    And while those numbers lay out the framework of this moment, they don’t explain how she got to this point. To accomplish that, she has seemingly done the impossible — remaining steady yet constantly evolving, being flexible yet obstinate in the ways that mattered, remaining curious but never losing her focus.

    VanDerveer credits her parents — both educators — for teaching her to value education and relationships. She cites her mom’s wisdom — “be a duck, let it roll off your back” — with her ability to keep focused on what matters most and trying not to fret about the rest.

    She often tells about an interview for a coaching job in which she was asked to explain her philosophy. She responded: Work. When asked to expand, she said: Hard work.

    As a coach, she maintained a standard no matter the team or season, from her JV squad at Ohio State to her national championship teams in Palo Alto. Even in her first year at Stanford — the only one in her 45 seasons with a losing record — she operated the same way. Stanford was rebuilding and not as elite as the school from which she had come, Ohio State, but she wanted the team to bond and build, to grow strong and tall. That was a non-negotiable. So she sought out feedback for that growth. She asked her players and assistants questions. She even pulled aside the team’s trainer after practice to ask for her thoughts on the day.

    “She was always interested in other people’s insights and observations,” said Charli Turner Thorne, who played for VanDerveer at Stanford from 1985-88 and coached against her at Arizona State from 1996-2022. “We’re like, ‘Tara, the athletic trainer doesn’t know anything about basketball.’ But she was this visionary who was always looking to shape her teams.”

    When VanDerveer started at Stanford, there was no 3-point line in the college game. The Cardinal, like many, used a power approach and took high-percentage shots close to the basket. But when the line was introduced before the 1987-88 season, VanDerveer did the simple math and informed her players they were going to learn outside shooting. Within five seasons, Stanford was attempting 13 a game — a key part of their first national title run.


    With the 3-point shot, VanDerveer and Stanford mastered the triangle offense. In 2008, Stanford played UC Davis, which had just transitioned to Division I. Stanford easily won by 35, but after the game, VanDerveer pulled aside head coach Sandy Simpson and said she was impressed with the mechanisms of the Princeton offense that UC Davis had run. Simpson pointed VanDerveer in the direction of one of her young assistants, Jennifer Gross.

    “Here I am, a new assistant coach at a former Division II school, and Tara’s like, ‘Who can I talk to about learning this offense? Would you be able to help?’” said Gross, now the UC Davis head coach. “It was a bit of a ‘What is going on here?’ … But she’s like, ‘I’m going to learn from anybody.’”

    Over the next several years, VanDerveer and Gross talked about the offense often, with Gross and her husband, Joe Teramoto, making multiple trips to Palo Alto to walk through the offense on the floor and watch film with VanDerveer. In 2021, the Cardinal won the national title running VanDerveer’s version of this offense.

    In her personal life, VanDerveer, 70, takes the same approach. In her 40s, she started piano lessons and dove in. The teacher, Jodi Gandolfi suggested a 30-minute lesson. VanDerveer countered with 90 minutes. They compromised … at 90. With lessons beginning in February, VanDerveer requested Stanford’s team schedulers to ensure every road-game hotel had a piano available so she could practice.

    Gandolfi, who hadn’t worked with beginners in decades, assumed that like most novices, VanDerveer would want to start where most beginners started — learning a simple song. But Gandolfi was struck by her student’s approach. Recalled Gandolfi: “She wanted to learn how to practice. She wanted to learn music theory.”

    While at Stanford, VanDerveer took up swimming laps and visited the pool three mornings a week. On mornings when Olympians like Katie Ledecky and Simone Manuel were in their lanes, she’d study their form and compare it to her own. When VanDerveer bought a ski boat about a decade ago, she sought out skilled ski partners who’d hit the water with her every summer morning and offer feedback on her technique.


    Tara VanDerVeer applauds her team during the 2009 Final Four game against Connecticut. (Tim Vizer / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

    But, as in hoops, much about VanDerveer remains unchanged. Namely, the haircut, the iconic bob that has been her signature look for decades. When she moved to Palo Alto, VanDerveer had a stylist cut her hair, but when that woman retired, the stylist’s daughter began cutting it. No one else has had VanDerveer in a salon chair since.

    “There’s slight variation, but it is pretty similar,” VanDerveer admits.

    In the past few seasons, college sports has changed at a faster-than-ever pace. NIL was introduced. The transfer portal opened up. And next season, VanDerveer and the Cardinal will join the ACC as the Pac-12 (as it’s currently set up) will fold. “She just really understands the big picture,” says Stanford associate head coach Kate Paye, who played for VanDerveer from 1991-95. “It isn’t all about winning for her, it’s about building lifetime relationships and mentoring women and empowering women.”

     

    She has stayed on top of changes and worked to shepherd the next generation of women’s basketball, its players and coaches. Her recent teams have loosely formed committees on food, travel and entertainment so she can take more input from the players. She has become a mentor and sounding board to not only the coaches she knows well, but even to those she doesn’t. This fall, when Florida State coach Brooke Wyckoff was diagnosed with breast cancer, VanDerveer sent her a hand-written letter. The two had never met. When the Cardinal played Albany earlier this season, she suggested swapping scouting reports so each team could learn more about themselves, something she has done with several other nonconference opponents over the years. When the Cardinals’ NCAA Tournament runs have ended early, she’s sometimes handed over her own scouting reports of potential March Madness opponents to her fellow Pac-12 coaches.

    Most of this has been done without fanfare or attention — the way she likes it.

    When VanDerveer passed Pat Summitt to become the winningest women’s college basketball coach in the 2020-21 season, the Cardinal were on the road at Pacific with no fans in the crowd because of pandemic protocols. The bench was spaced with six feet between each chair. Everyone wore masks except the players on the floor. Her achievement was met with a subdued celebration that included only the team. Admittedly, VanDerveer enjoyed the intimacy of that.

    Players presented her with a fleece jacket to wear to the pool. “T-DAWG,” it read on the back.

    This next milestone will be different. Stanford is celebrating alumni weekend with dozens of former players coming into town. Pomp and circumstance, two words VanDerveer doesn’t love, will be directed at her. Even with No. 8 Stanford at 15-2, VanDerveer has been fitting in interviews and photoshoots in every spare moment. Everyone wants to know the secrets to her success, wants to know how she did it.

    Unlike the redwoods, the answer is quite obvious.

    She evolved but stayed the same. She was flexible yet unwavering. She remained a student and a teacher whose roots have allowed her to finally reach heights that no others have.

    (Illustration and data visual: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos of Tara VanDerveer: Cody Glenn / Icon Sportswire, Jack Dempsey / Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • From Idaho to iconic titles: Top 10 Tara VanDerveer moments as Stanford coach nears all-time wins record

    From Idaho to iconic titles: Top 10 Tara VanDerveer moments as Stanford coach nears all-time wins record

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    It’s impossible to tell the story of the past four decades of college basketball without Tara VanDerveer. The Stanford icon, USA Basketball coach, and overall standard-bearer for West Coast basketball is an integral character in the growth of the women’s game since Title IX. And with two more wins, VanDerveer will stand alone as the winningest coach in college, men’s or women’s, passing former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski.

    GO DEEPER

    The summer of solitude that sustained a coaching icon

    In anticipation of her potential record-breaking win this weekend, we will publish stories this week that focus on her esteemed career. Here is a look back at some of VanDerveer’s monumental victories:

    1. Win No. 1

    Dec. 1, 1978: Idaho 70, Northern Montana 68 (OT)

    Before win No. 1,201 there was win No. 1. As the head coach of Idaho, VanDerveer faced Northern Montana College (now known as Montana State-Northern) in her opening game. It was the program’s fifth season of existence — the Vandals didn’t even belong to a conference yet — and they had tapped a 25-year-old who had been an Ohio State assistant for two seasons to lead them.

    Idaho was up with one possession to play, but the Vandals committed a foul and went to overtime, where they edged out the Polar Bears by two. As VanDerveer told the Stanford Daily in 2020, “Before we went into overtime, we were up three and there’s like 10 seconds left in the game or something. I said, ‘OK you guys look, we got this game, just don’t foul.’ We went out, the girl hit the shot, and we fouled her and I said, ‘This is going to be hard.’ I’m thinking, ‘Boy, this coaching thing is not going to be easy.’”

    2. Sellout crowd, momentous win in Iowa

    Feb. 3, 1985: Ohio State 56, Iowa 47

    After two seasons at Idaho, including a 25-6 record in Year 2, VanDerveer returned to Columbus as the head coach. She led the Buckeyes to the inaugural NCAA Tournament in 1982 and returned to the Big Dance in 1984, when they landed in the AP Top 25 for the first time in her tenure.

    En route to a fourth straight Big Ten title, Ohio State played at Iowa — then coached by C. Vivian Stringer — near the end of conference play. In what would become a precursor for record-breaking crowds in the state decades later, the teams played in front of 22,157 people at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. That obliterated the previous attendance record for an NCAA women’s basketball game of 10,622 set two years earlier. Team officials originally listed the attendance at 18,500, reportedly to avoid trouble with the fire marshals because the arena’s capacity was 15,450; fans even had to stand in the aisles during the game.

    3. Signing a game-changer

    1986: Stanford signs Jennifer Azzi

    VanDerveer returned to the West after five seasons with the Buckeyes to helm a Stanford team that had gone 9-19 the season before. Her first item of business was to recruit Jennifer Azzi, a point guard from Oak Ridge, Tenn. The Cardinal had been so bad that VanDerveer told Sports Illustrated she didn’t let Azzi watch any practices or game film during her recruitment, but Stanford’s academic pedigree helped convince Azzi to follow her to the Pacific coast and become the program’s first true star.

    Azzi helped lead the Cardinal to the NCAA Tournament in 1988 as a sophomore, starting a streak of appearances that continues to this day. She was the Pac-10 player of the year as a junior when Stanford made the Elite Eight and then the national player of the year in 1990 when the Cardinal won their first national championship. Azzi remains the program’s all-time leader in 3-point percentage, ranks second in total assists and places third in steals. The line of greats that have come through Palo Alto, including Sonja Henning, Val Whiting, Kate Starbird, Candice Wiggins, Nneka and Chiney Ogwumike, leading up to Cameron Brink begins with Azzi. She was VanDerveer’s biggest off-court win.

    4.  Reaching the pinnacle

    April 4, 1990: Stanford 88, Auburn 80

    VanDerveer won her first national championship at Tennessee’s Thompson-Boling Arena, 20 minutes away from where Azzi played high school basketball. The Cardinal were fairly dominant throughout the tournament, winning their five games by an average of 15 points. The title game was more back-and-forth, as they went up by 11 early, then trailed by 11 later in the first half. It took a superlative shooting performance from Katy Steding, who hit six 3-pointers to defeat Auburn, sending the Tigers to their third-straight defeat in the championship game.

    In her 12th season as a head coach, VanDerveer had reached the pinnacle and established Stanford as a national powerhouse, only the sixth team to ever win an NCAA title. Oddly enough, the Cardinal never earned a No. 1 AP poll ranking during the season, but that would come soon enough. Even though Azzi was graduating, Henning and Whiting remained to carry the torch.

    5.  Becoming an icon

    April 5, 1992: Stanford 78, Western Kentucky 62

    One title put VanDerveer on the map. Two titles made her an icon. In the 30-plus years since this game, only four more programs have won multiple championships (UConn, Notre Dame, Baylor and South Carolina), and those teams’ coaches have become legends in their own right.

    The 1992 season was the third consecutive Final Four trip for the Cardinal, but they had to replace three starters from the previous season. Even so, they went 30-3 and dominated Western Kentucky in the final, led by freshman Rachel Hemmer’s 18 points and 15 rebounds. Their toughest matchup came in the Final Four when they held on 66-65 against Dawn Staley and Virginia.

    6. Taking down Tennessee

    Dec. 15, 1996: Stanford 82, Tennessee 65

    VanDerveer took the 1995-1996 season off to coach Team USA leading up to the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, and the program continued to thrive in her absence. The combination of Marianne Stanley and Amy Tucker led Stanford to an undefeated Pac-10 record and another trip to the Final Four. Still, VanDerveer’s return resulted in another milestone.

    The Lady Vols had won the national title the previous season — what would end up being the first of a three-peat — and four total championships in the past decade. They were the gold standard of the sport under Pat Summitt, and Stanford had yet to beat them on their home court in Thompson-Boling Arena, including a 36-point defeat in Knoxville two years prior. Not this time. The Cardinal went in as the nation’s No. 1 team and took care of No. 5 Tennessee. Starbird was the team’s high scorer with 26 points, outdueling Tamika Catchings, who had 24 on 11-of-28 shooting. The teams both made the Final Four that year, but Stanford lost in the semifinal before a potential rematch in the title game.

    This was a short-lived peak for the Cardinal, who wouldn’t win at Tennessee again until 2012 despite playing there every other year.


    VanDerveer found the formula for consistency in the 2008 season. (Matt Marriott / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

    7. Ending a drought

    March 31, 2008: Stanford 98, Maryland 87

    VanDerveer and Stanford entered this tournament after a 10-season Final Four drought. The Cardinal had won or tied for the PAC-10 title in eight of those years, but they weren’t experiencing the NCAA Tournament success to which they had grown accustomed. The drought finally ended in 2008, as the Candice Wiggins-led squad broke through against Maryland. Wiggins scored 41 points in the win, making it to the national semifinals as a senior after two previous losses in the Elite Eight. This was a return to the mountaintop for VanDerveer, as Stanford would advance to the Final Four each of the next four seasons.

    8. UConn streak-busters

    Dec. 30, 2010: Stanford 71, Connecticut 59

    Connecticut came into Maples Pavilion having won 90 games in a row, including two national championships. Stanford emphatically put an end to what was then the longest winning streak in NCAA history. Point guard Jeanette Pohlen had 31 points and six assists as the Cardinal exacted minor revenge for losing in the 2010 national championship. They ended up bookending UConn’s streak, having handed the Huskies their most recent loss in the 2008 Final Four.

    9. T-Dawg wins again

    Dec. 16, 2020: Stanford 104, Pacific 61

    VanDerveer became the winningest coach in women’s college basketball history, passing Summitt with her 1,099th win, all but 176 coming at Stanford. The pandemic meant no fans were in attendance for her milestone, but the players presented VanDerveer with a swim jacket that read “T-Dawg” after the final buzzer to mark the occasion. Cameron Brink, who was a freshman on that roster, told The Athletic that the Cardinal have something “funny” planned for the upcoming record.


    VanDerveer holds the trophy after beating Arizona for another national championship. (Kirby Lee / USA TODAY Sports)

    10. Reaching elite status

    April 4, 2021: Stanford 54, Arizona 53

    More than three decades after winning her first national championship, VanDerveer collected her third, joining a list that includes only Summitt, Geno Auriemma and Kim Mulkey. This one had the extra significance of featuring another PAC-12 team (Arizona) in the title game. After years of carrying the conference on their back, the Cardinal had some West Coast company in the final weekend and final game of the season.

    (Top photo of Tara VanDerveer: Jack Dempsey / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

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  • Winter storm, Big Ten, prime-time attention … nothing stops the Caitlin Clark show

    Winter storm, Big Ten, prime-time attention … nothing stops the Caitlin Clark show

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    IOWA CITY, Iowa — In a sold-out Big Ten showdown before a national prime-time audience, No. 3 Iowa once again reminded No. 13 Indiana and everyone else watching that it has Caitlin Clark — and they don’t.

    The Hawkeyes buried the Hoosiers with a 3-point barrage, knocking down 15 in an 84-57 blowout Saturday night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Among her 30 points, Iowa’s Clark drilled a pair of logo 3-pointers and dished 11 assists. The victory was as dominant as it was complete. Consider it a highly visible statement by the defending NCAA runners-up to the rest of women’s basketball.

    “I think the sky’s the limit,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said.

    It’s hardly unusual for a game between the Hawkeyes and Hoosiers to generate eyeballs and interest. In the land of yesteryear, which feels closer to yesterday than four decades ago, Iowa and Indiana matchups sold out Carver-Hawkeye Arena, and iconic men’s basketball coaches Bob Knight and Tom Davis seemed larger than life.

    In 2024, it’s still happening. This time, it involves their women’s basketball teams. Bluder, the winningest coach in Big Ten women’s basketball history, stood on one side while IU’s Teri Moren, who guided the Hoosiers to the Big Ten regular-season crown last year, walked the opposite sideline. Clark, the reigning national player of the year, faced a fellow Naismith finalist in center Mackenzie Holmes.

    The Hawkeyes (17-1, 6-0 Big Ten) and Hoosiers (14-2, 5-1) entered the game unbeaten and tied atop the Big Ten standings. After Iowa’s Gabbie Marshall drilled a 3-pointer to put the Hawkeyes up by 15 points, the sound inside reached 115 decibels. The Hawkeyes won decisively — and Clark once again stole the show — but the scene and setup were as notable as the result.

    GO DEEPER

    Their lights stay green: Comparing the shooting prowess of Caitlin, Steph, Dame and Sabrina

    Fans wearing black and gold filled the arena bowl despite 25 inches of snow hitting the Iowa City area and a blizzard sending the wind chill to 29 degrees below zero. Gus Johnson and Sarah Kustok called the game for Fox in prime time, and that this showdown aired on a major network opposed by an NFL playoff game showed it’s no novelty act.

    “This game being televised was a big deal,” Bluder said. “I think it’s partly because of the atmosphere that we have here at Iowa. You had two great teams competing against each other. You’ve got the best player in America. I mean, that’s must-see TV. So why wouldn’t you want to have this game on?”

    Johnson had never watched Clark in person and was giddy to call her game when he arrived two hours before tip. He got his start in the business as a student broadcasting Howard Lady Bison games with coach Sanya Tyler and called New York Liberty games in the WNBA for 10 years. Of all the great athletes he has covered, he sees something different in Clark, whom he called a “virtuoso.”

    “I had never watched a player like Diana (Taurasi), especially when she got to the WNBA,” Johnson said. “But this young lady (Clark) is a whole different level. She’s playing in a different dimension, a different realm.

    “She is a perfect example of the evolution of the game of basketball. I’ve never seen a woman with that kind of range and that kind of fluidness, handle. She can go wherever she wants to go on the court, and she’s got an incredible acumen for this game. She sees things people don’t see.”

    When asked about the Clark phenomenon, Johnson compared the Iowa senior to the pinnacle of athletic success.

    “Michael Jordan,” Johnson said. “He was Mick Jagger. He was a one-man rock show, and that’s what Caitlin is. She’s a rock star. People just gravitate towards her because of her spectacular play. She doesn’t just play well; she plays with a pizzazz, a swagger, a cockiness, orneriness, but with a big smile, kind of like Larry Bird used to. Excuse my French, but she’ll talk more than a little s— to you on the floor.”

    With 32 seconds left in the third quarter, Clark blasted a 3-pointer from the logo’s Tigerhawk beak to give the Hawkeyes a commanding 63-48 lead. Clark waved her arms and the crowd responded enthusiastically. On Iowa’s first possession in the fourth quarter, Clark passed to guard Molly Davis for a layup and tweaked her ankle. One minute later, Clark re-entered the game to applause. It was her 46th career 30-point game.

    But what also makes Iowa so dangerous are the players who surround Clark. Davis scored 18 points and choked up in a postgame news conference after describing her expanding role with the Hawkeyes. Kate Martin remained the Hawkeyes’ glue performer with 10 points and 12 rebounds. Marshall drained four 3-pointers, and nobody spaces the floor — which helps Clark — better when she’s knocking down perimeter shots.

    At game’s end, perhaps a thousand youths lined up near the tunnel to Iowa’s locker room, hoping for a picture or a signature from Clark. With security around her, Clark signed a few autographs, then left for the locker room. She’s the superstar at home or away, and every game she has played not a neutral site has sold out this year. It’s generated intense love in most situations — or modest vitriol in others.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    With No. 1 WNBA Draft pick, Indiana Fever can change future with Caitlin Clark

    “That’s what kind of comes with it when you have the stardom,” she said. “I think something that I try to live by is, at the level you feel the praise, that’s the level you’re going to feel the hate, too. So you’ve got to stay right in the middle.”

    Either way, Clark and the Hawkeyes continue to elevate the sport with each game, whether it’s an exhibition on a football field or a sold-out home game with the cheapest pre-blizzard tickets going for nearly $270 apiece. Their traveling rock show will fill up many arenas and generate quality television ratings.

    “Everybody loves a winner,” Johnson said. “They want to see her play because she’s a winner. And she’s going to keep winning. And keep amazing, I think, America and the world.”

    (Photo: Matthew Holst / Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • Caitlin Clark stars with 30 as No. 3 Iowa defeats No. 14 Indiana 84-57 before 13,000 despite snow

    Caitlin Clark stars with 30 as No. 3 Iowa defeats No. 14 Indiana 84-57 before 13,000 despite snow

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    IOWA CITY, Iowa — Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes fed off a crowd of more than 13,000 who showed up Saturday night when travel wasn’t recommended throughout most of the state because of blizzard-like conditions.

    Clark had 30 points and 11 assists before a national audience on Fox, and Molly Davis added 18 points as No. 3 Iowa took sole possession of the Big Ten Conference lead with an 84-57 win over No. 14 Indiana.

    Iowa (17-1, 6-0 Big Ten) extended its winning streak to 14 games while snapping the 13-game winning streak of the Hoosiers (14-2, 5-1).

    Clark, the nation’s leading scorer at 31 points per game, didn’t need any last-second shots like the buzzer-beating 3-pointer that defeated the Hoosiers in last year’s regular-season finale. Instead, she shook off a slow start to record her 52nd career double-double.

    Clark finished 10 of 21 from the field, 6 of 16 on 3-pointers, on a night when the Hawkeyes took charge of the conference race.

    “I do know, she is almost at her best in the big moments,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said. “Really, she is.”

    It was just another game, Clark said.

    “You know, I think I’ve been through enough games in my career where there’s all these wonderful highs but there’s also lows too, and that’s just competitive sport,” Clark said. “That’s just basketball.”

    Clark missed her first six 3-point attempts, but opened the second quarter with back-to-back 3-pointers to give Iowa a 25-19 lead.

    Clark picked up her second foul with 4:49 left in the second quarter with Iowa up 28-26, and sat for 2 1/2 minutes. But Davis stepped up with seven points and an assist while Clark was out as the Hawkeyes extended their lead as much as seven points. Clark returned to finish the half, and her 3-pointer with three seconds left gave Iowa a 43-37 halftime lead and ignited the crowd in Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

    Iowa then opened the third quarter with an 11-2 run, started by a Clark layup eight seconds into the quarter and capped by a two-possession sequence in which Clark had a 3-pointer and an assist on Gabbie Marshall’s 3-pointer.

    “We didn’t make a lot of defensive adjustments, actually,” Bluder said. “I know we talked about a couple of offensive things we wanted to do, including that play right out of the chute. (Clark) gets that layup and that really gave us momentum.”

    Indiana coach Teri Moren said her team had too many miscues, finishing with 15.

    “We were just turning the ball over too much (in the first half), but we were still in the game,” Moren said. “And then we give Caitlin that backdoor layup and all of the sudden we’re down (eight points), and from there it just got out of control.”

    Indiana was held to just 20 second-half points, including nine in the fourth quarter. The Hoosiers had just seven field goals in the half.

    “The second half, I thought, was beautiful,” Bluder said. “I thought our players played really well together, offensively and defensively.”

    Iowa took plenty of 3-pointers, finishing 15 of 36 (42%), while the Hoosiers went 5 of 20 (25%).

    “We weren’t very good,” Moren said. “I’d love to be able to give you reasons why that was. We just looked out of sorts.”

    Marshall scored 12 points for Iowa, making 4 of 7 shots from behind the arc. Kate Martin added 10 points and 12 rebounds.

    Mackenzie Holmes led Indiana with 16 points, seven rebounds and two blocks. Yarden Garzon and Sydney Parrish each scored 11.

    BIG PICTURE

    Indiana: The Hoosiers didn’t arrive in Iowa City until Saturday morning because of the winter storm that shut down travel through most of Iowa. It didn’t seem to affect them in the first half as they kept pace with the Hawkeyes. But Indiana was held to just 27.3% shooting in the third quarter as Iowa pulled away. “We’re not going to use that as an excuse,” Moren said of the travel issues. “That’s not the excuse why we lost.”

    Iowa: It turned into another Clark show in front of a national television audience. “I mean, it’s dangerous outside, and our fans don’t care,” Bluder said. “They’re amazing.”

    UP NEXT

    Indiana: Hosts Minnesota on Wednesday.

    Iowa: Hosts Wisconsin on Tuesday.

    ___ Get alerts and updates on AP Top 25 basketball throughout the season. Sign up here ___ AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball

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