Iowa fans certainly miss the Caitlin Clark show. And on May 4, this show returns to Iowa City one more time.
The phenom from West Des Moines, Iowa, had hoop dreams since a kid. Her “Future Dreams” worksheet from second grade featured several basketball goals such as to earn a basketball scholarship, meet Maya Moore, and get to the WNBA.
She did all those things.
Nowhere on that paper did it say she wanted to uplift an entire sport and captivate the next generation of women hoopers. But she’s doing that too.
When the Indiana Fever take on the Brazilian National Team at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on May 4, she’ll be reminded of that.
“I always had big dreams and big aspirations ever since I was a young kid,” Clark told David Letterman during a recent appearance on his Netflix special “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.” “I don’t think you could ever really imagine it to be on this level. I think I kind of exceeded my expectations.”
Clark grew up around the game of basketball. She started off tagging along with her older brother, Blake’s, practices, where her dad, Brent, was the coach. And when she started playing at five years old, there were no girls leagues around, so she played on her dad’s team along with her younger brother, Colin.
Her skills were pretty glaring early on.
“She literally, I would say, would score quite a few goals in soccer and in the same way with basketball,” Brent said via HER documentary. “She would pull up from the free throw line on a six- or seven-foot hoop and make it pretty consistently.”
There were never enough hoops on the court for her, though. She always wanted to play with Blake and his friends at home though she was often physically outmatched. Her mom’s advice to her: “If you want to play with them, you’ve got to find a way to hold your own.”
And so she found a way — not just against her brother but against all boys. She began to dominate the boys league through her last few years and even won the league MVP one season.
“I played against [Clark] in games when we were in the first or second grade,” former Iowa men’s basketball player and Waukee, Iowa, native Payton Sandfort recalled in February of 2024 via Eliot Clough of Rivals. “It wasn’t fun. I think we got the best of her when we were younger, and then she started to get better.
“I remember she [beat] us in the semifinal in the tournament,” he added. “I was just devastated.”
She first started playing against other girls on the All Iowa Attack AAU team as a sixth grader, playing several years ahead of her age group, and she still dominated. Her first letter of interest came from Missouri State ahead of the seventh grade.
And by the time she got to Dowling Catholic High School in 2016, she was a five-star prospect balancing varsity basketball and soccer through her first two years. Her focus was fixated on basketball, so much that she used to shoot around right before soccer games. Her teammates weren’t too fond of that.
Offers from several Power Five schools began to flow in. She eventually cut her list down to three schools: Iowa, Iowa State, and Notre Dame. And while she first verbally committed to the Fighting Irish, she flipped to Iowa with an official announcement on social media ahead of her senior season.
Upon her commitment, she made a promise to then-head coach Lisa Bluder and the Hawkeye faithful: Bring Iowa back to the Final Four.
“She loves seeking challenges,” Clark’s former high school coach Kristin Meyer said. “She wants to go after those challenges. And she just loves the excitement of achieving a challenge or overcoming the odds.”
Her collegiate career began in 2020 in front of zero fans due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And with that, her historic freshman season nearly went unnoticed.
In 30 games played, Clark led the country in scoring with 26.6 points along with 7.1 assists and 5.9 rebounds on her way to being named Big Ten Freshman of the Year. She became the first freshman ever to win the Dawn Staley Award, given to the best guard in the country. The Hawkeyes lost to UConn in the Sweet 16 of the 2021 NCAA tournament.
She took a step up in her sophomore season, and her 46-point explosion against Michigan was the birth of a collegiate superstar.
On Feb. 6, 2022, in a road game in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Clark scored 33 points through the last 13 minutes, 21 points in the last six minutes, carrying the team from a 22-point deficit to a five-point contest. “And still lost,” she joked with Letterman.
Michigan took the victory, 98-90. But that game will forever be known as the “Caitlin Clark game.”
“I remember we didn’t have everybody active that game, but Coach Bluder wasn’t even that mad that we didn’t win,” Clark said. “She was staring at the TV [at the airport] like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ Everyone was just kind of in awe.”
Her 2021-22 campaign concluded with another Dawn Staley Award and her first Big Ten Player of the Year award after posting averages of 27 points, eight rebounds, and eight assists across 32 games.
Iowa went on to win the Big Ten tournament for the first time since 2019 and placed as a second seed in the NCAA tournament; however, a 64-62 devastating second-round loss to No. 10 Creighton cut the Final Four aspirations in half.
“From your greatest failures can come your greatest successes,” Clark said of the 2022 NCAA tournament loss via Dargan Southard of the Des Moines Register. “We thought we were going to get to the Final Four.”
Then came her junior season — the year Clark became a global icon. She won the 2022-23 Naismith Women’s College Player of the Year and the Wooden Award after averaging 27.8 points, 8.6 assists, and 7.1 rebounds and led Iowa to a then-program-best 31 wins.
Every game was nearly sold out. Her iconic No. 22 jersey filled up the stands, home or away. She was the face of college basketball, and all eyes were fixed on her.
A year after the tragic upset to Creighton, Clark made good on her promise and led No. 2 Iowa back to the Final Four for the first time since 1993. There, the Hawkeyes matched up with the defending champion South Carolina.
The Hawkeyes went in as heavy underdogs. But No. 22 put on her cape and saved the day with a 41-point performance to lead Iowa to the 77-73 victory and the program’s first-ever national championship appearance.
“She was on point,” South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley said of Clark after the Final Four matchup via Hawk Fanatic. “I mean, she was everything that we saw on film. She was everything, like assists, points, turnovers, all of them. She ran the gamut of who she is as a player.”
She put up a 30-piece in the National Championship game against Angel Reese and LSU, but it wasn’t enough to get over the hump. The Tigers took the 102-85 victory in front of a then-women’s college basketball record 16.1 million viewers.
“I’m telling you this is brutal. It is really tough to walk out of that locker room today,” an emotional Bluder said. “But I am very thankful for the season we had, and I don’t want anything to take away from that. We played in the national championship game.”
With tears streaming down her face and a Gatorade towel wrapped around her neck, Clark, as vulnerable as the public had ever seen her, made it clear what kind of impact she hopes to have on the game of basketball.
“I want my legacy to be the impact that I can have on young kids and people in the state of Iowa,” she said. “I was just that young girl, so all you have to do is dream, and you can be in moments like this.”
At that point, the impact she made on the sport was already beyond her wildest dreams. And it only got stronger in her final year with Iowa.
RELATED: Pregame: Caitlin Clark returns to Carver
Clark went into the 2023-24 season as an all-time great women’s college basketball player. By the end of the season, she had arguably the greatest collegiate basketball career of all-time.
She posted 31.6 points per game, 8.9 assists per game, and 7.4 rebounds per game as the Hawkeyes logged a new-program record 34 wins. And with her second Naismith Player of the Year honor, Clark became the eighth player to win the award twice, the first since Brittney Griner in 2012 and 2013.
Many prestigious scoring records were broken throughout that season. Her 2,813th point passed Megan Gustafson to become Iowa’s all-time leading scorer; her 3,528th point passed Kelsey Plum to become women’s college basketball’s all-time leading scorer; and her 3,668th point passed Pete Maravich to become college basketball’s all-time leading scorer.
Clark was nicknamed “Ponytail Pete” due to the resemblance of Maravich in her game. But nobody could’ve predicted her passing the LSU legend. Not even the freshman high school teacher who once told her, “You are Pete Maravich.”
“Honestly, it wasn’t something I ever really thought about too much,” Clark told Rowe of the scoring records. “It’s just something that’s come with my four years of playing basketball and being myself.
“I’ve just been so fortunate to have a coach that has allowed me to be me,” she added. Ever since I stepped foot on campus, she believed in me so much, and she never said, ‘Do this,’ or, ‘Don’t do that.’ It was more like, ‘Be yourself.’”
Earning a No. 1 seed for the NCAA tournament, Clark and Co. put together one of the most memorable runs in recent tournament history. The Hawkeyes made it to the Sweet Sixteen and got their revenge on LSU with a 94-87 victory.
Then came Paige Bueckers and UConn. In a Final Four thriller that came down to the very last second, Clark’s 21-point, nine-rebound, seven-assist performance helped Iowa come out with the 71-69 victory, setting up a rematch with South Carolina for the title.
This time, the Gamecocks got the best of them. Clark’s 30-point performance wasn’t enough, and Iowa suffered the 87-75 loss. Teary-eyed and all, she walked off the court wearing her black and gold cape for the final time.
Her impact on the game during her time at Iowa, however, will stay forever.
“I just want to congratulate Iowa on an incredible season, and I want to personally thank Caitlin Clark for lifting up our sport,” Staley said during the trophy presentation. “She carried a heavy load for our sport, and it’s not going to stop here at the collegiate tour. But when she is the No. 1 pick in the WNBA Draft, she’s going to lift that league up as well.
“Caitlin Clark, if you’re out there, you are one of the GOATs of our game,” she added.
And she was right. Because she is one of the greatest collegiate players of all-time. And with the first pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft, the Indiana Fever selected tha NCAA all-time leading scorer. Truly a franchise-altering moment from the jump.
Well, sort of.
When Clark declared for the draft in late-Feb. 2024, the Fever saw an immediate increase in activity across all social media pages and tickets doubled in price with fans anticipating she’d be the first overall pick. The “Caitlin Clark Effect” was in full throttle.
The season finally came around, and Indiana struggled out the gate. The team got off to a 1-8 start to the season and were sitting at the bottom of the WNBA standings; however, Clark showed flashes of superstar potential.
In her very first professional game, she put up 20 points on the Connecticut Sun in a 92-71 losing effort. And in her sixth game against the Los Angeles Sparks, she led the Fever to a 78-73 win behind a near triple-double of 11 points, 10 rebounds, and eight assists along with four steals.
“Obviously, it was a big adjustment going from the college level to the professional level,” she said. “There’s a lot of areas you have to learn and that you have to learn very quickly.”
It wasn’t until the 12th game of the season — a 85-83 win over the Washington Mystics — when the Fever took off, going 19-12 the rest of the way to earn the sixth seed in the 2024 Playoffs.
The rookie guard put up a 19-point, 13-assist, 12-rebound triple-double on Sabrina Ionescu, Brianna Stewart, and the eventual 2024 WNBA Champion New York Liberty in a 83-78 midseason win. And in a 101-93 loss to the Dallas Wings the following week, her 19-assist game broke the league record for most assists in a game.
Clark averaged 19.2 points, 8.4 assists, 5.7 rebounds, and 1.3 steals per game through the regular season — her 337 total assists being a single-season record. She ran away with the Rookie of the Year award, was named a First Team All-WNBA member, and finished fourth in MVP voting.
“I feel like I can continue to show up and be the same person that I am,” she said. “And then as a player, just continuing to improve every single day and help this organization get even better.”
But it was her impact off the court that really stood out. The Fever averaged 4,066 fans per home game in 2023, the second-lowest in the league, and skyrocketed up to 17,035 fans per contest, the next closest team being the New York Liberty with 12,729 fans. And their average road attendance of 15,131 fans exceeded every other team’s home attendance.
There were six teams that moved their games against Indiana to bigger arenas. There were also six teams that finished with an average of at least 10,000 fans at home. No team reached five-figure averages in 2023.
The league’s viewership grew by over 100 percent across all streaming platforms. Its 54 million unique viewers was a league-record.
“We can’t put a bushel-barrel over this flame,” Bluder told Letterman. “You don’t say ‘whoa’ to a racehorse. You got to let her go. There is a fine line you have to walk when you’re coaching a player like her.”
At the end of the day, basketball is a show business. And there’s no show that draws an audience like the Caitlin Clark show.
One last show in Iowa City.