CLEVELAND — The first time UConn’s Paige Bueckers matched up against Iowa’s Caitlin Clark was in an old dusty middle school gym for an AAU basketball game in front of a small crowd of friends and family.
Nearly a decade later, the two Naismith Player of the Year recipients will be playing in front of a sold-out crowd at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse — home of the NBA Cleveland Cavilers. In arguably one of the biggest women’s basketball games ever, No. 1 Iowa will take on No. 3 UConn in the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament.
“We’ve known each other for a very long time,” Bueckers said at a Thursday press conference. “Caitlin gets better each and every year, but she’s kind of been doing that since our AAU days.”
Friday night’s contest will be a rematch from the Sweet 16 in 2021, where UConn beat Iowa 92-72 on its way to a record 12th appearance in the national championship.
Bueckers finished that game with 18 points, nine rebounds, and eight assists, and the Huskies had three other starters score over 15 points, with current Phoenix Mercury guard Christyn Williams leading UConn with 27 points.
During the 2021 matchup, Bueckers and UConn held Clark, a freshman at the time, to her tournament-low 21 points on 33 percent shooting from the field.
“That game seems like forever ago, and I was looking back at some old game footage, and we both look really young,” Clark said. “It’s cool to see kind of how our careers have evolved.”
Much has changed since the last time Bueckers and Clark faced off. First, Friday’s crowd won’t have to be limited due to COVID-19 restrictions, which made it so the 2021 tournament was played in a ‘bubble’ style of format, meaning players had to quarantine and had limited interactions with the outside world.
Second, the tables have turned for Clark and Bueckers.
After her freshman season in 2021, Bueckers was branded as the future of women’s basketball due to her exceptional scoring ability from all three levels and being both a facilitator and a playmaker with the ball.
Does this sound familiar to any Iowa fans?
After playing just 17 games her sophomore season due to a knee injury, Bueckers tore her ACL in a pickup game in August 2022, causing her to miss the entirety of her junior season as the Huskies failed to advance to the Elite Eight of the tournament for the first time in over a decade.
In her absence, Clark exploded on the scene, quickly becoming the face of women’s basketball by shattering scoring records and taking Iowa all the way to its first national championship appearance in program history. Clark is the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer, men’s or women’s.
Bueckers said she realized she was the “media darling” during her freshman year but said she doesn’t hold any grudges now that much of the spotlight has shifted toward Clark.
“It’s great for the game and to be at this level on this high of stakes to see where we were in AAU competing against each other to now, it’s just cool to see,” Bueckers said.
While much of the mainstream media has been touting this game as Paige vs. Caitlin, head coach Lisa Bluder said she doesn’t like this sentiment and that it should be strictly Iowa vs. UConn.
“Let these two women do what they do best,” Bluder said.
“If that was the case, then we would all sit down, and it would be one vs. one, and no one really wants to see that,” associate head coach Jan Jensen added. “If you’re gonna get all caught up on Paige vs. Caitlin hoopla, you’ll lose out on this moment.”
