IOWA CITY, Iowa— Caitlin Clark said junior teammate Sydney Affolter stepped in and played well after Molly Davis was injured. Kylie Feuerbach is also a redshirt junior.
“That’s what we’re going to need moving forward,” Clark said following Iowa’s regular-season finale victory over Ohio State. “I was proud of our bunch when [the Buckeyes] went on their runs. I assumed we always have a response.
Five minutes and several questions later, she praised Hannah Stuelke for another good performance before responding to a follow-up question on the sophomore forward.
“This is what Hannah is capable of every night,” Clark went on to say. “I think it’s just her confidence and belief in herself. I felt she made some impressive free throws. But, sure, I think she played really well.
IOWA CITY, Iowa — Caitlin Clark thought junior teammate Sydney Affolter came in and played great after Molly Davis’ injury. Redshirt junior Kylie Feuerbach, too.
“That’s what we’re going to need going forward,” Clark said after Iowa’s regular-season finale win over Ohio State. “I’m proud of our group when [the Buckeyes] went on their runs. I thought we always had a response.”
Five minutes and many questions later, she dropped in a note on another strong performance from Hannah Stuelke before answering a follow-up question about the sophomore forward.
“This is what Hannah is capable of every night,” Clark said. “I think it’s just her confidence, believing in herself. I thought she made some big free throws. But yeah, I think she played really, really well and obviously that’s going to be important going down the stretch.”
Clark is most well-known for her prolific scoring and career 3,685 points that put her past Pete Maravich’s legendary all-time points record. Her passing ability is a close second and she’s sixth on the all-time NCAA Division I women’s list with 1,058. They provide as much of a wow factor as her logo 3s, even if it’s been overshadowed recently by her scoring records.
Iowa forward Hannah Stuelke (left) and guard Sydney Affolter (center) have thrived in bigger roles on the team this season with Caitlin Clark leading the way. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Iowa forward Hannah Stuelke (left) and guard Sydney Affolter (center) have thrived in bigger roles on the team this season with Caitlin Clark leading the way. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Glossed over even more is her ability to dish it out in another way. It is no secret that the media masses in interview rooms and millions watching on TV are there for her, a generational talent who has captured the interest of basketball and non-sports fans alike. It is her name and number on the backs of the majority of fans in both home and visiting arenas, and her likeness on billboards and TV commercials.
But “The Clark Effect,” as it is known, wouldn’t be without the Iowa teammates who have suited up next to her over the years. They all wear “Iowa” on the front of their jerseys, just as fans have on the front of Clark’s T-shirts, and she makes sure the spotlight is widened to credit them whenever possible. It’s one way she’s taken more leadership of a new group after three years of the same starters, and a big reason Iowa is in a position to return to the Final Four.
“My teammates, I’m just so thankful,” Clark said the night she passed Kelsey Plum’s all-time NCAA DI women’s scoring record in February. “They let me be me and I wouldn’t be where I am if it wasn’t for them.”
“Everyone on that team loves her,” Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder said. “They are not jealous of her. They know how hard she works for it. And they know what she brings to our team. So I’m very thankful that I have a group of women that understand that.”
𝟭 𝗼𝗳 𝟭.#Hawkeyes pic.twitter.com/5mhp7Gejq3
— Iowa Women’s Basketball (@IowaWBB) February 17, 2024
Clark, the No. 4 overall recruit in the 2020 class, is the only five-star recruit on Iowa’s roster, and the first since current assistant coach Tania Davis in the class of 2015, according to ESPN HoopGurlz data. None of the teammates who played alongside Clark over the past four seasons entered college as five-star recruits and only a few cracked the top 100 recruiting rankings. Three of those, including No. 45 overall recruit Stuelke, are recent Iowa additions as part of the 2022 class. No one ranked higher than No. 39.
Clark’s ability to find teammates even when they don’t think they’re open makes everyone around her better, lifting the team into the top of the Associated Press poll and title talk. She’s the Division I assists leader for a third consecutive season, averaging a career-best 8.7 per game as a senior and 8.1 over her career.
Iowa logo
Caitlin Clark
G – IOWA – #22
2023 – 2024 SEASON
31.9
Pts
7.3
Reb
8.8
Ast
1.7
Stl
34
Min
In 92 of her 100 collegiate games heading into this year, that supporting cast looked the same. Their experience with each other was a large reason the Hawkeyes ran through the NCAA tournament last year to the program’s first national title game, where they lost to LSU.
Two of those four familiar faces remain.
Kate Martin earned her first all-Big Ten honor this week on the second team and is the first Iowa player to reach at least 900 points, 500 rebounds, 400 assists, 120 steals and 60 blocks in a career. Fans call the fifth-year guard and captain who grew up attending Iowa camps “the glue.”
Fifth-year guard Gabbie Marshall is “the spark” and her 3-pointers at pivotal moments elicit similar roars from fans at Carver-Hawkeye Arena as Clark’s barrage from deep. She was named to the All-Big Ten Tournament team last year and became the first Hawkeye with 200 made 3s and 200 steals in a career.
Outside of the key returners, there were starters playing alongside an even-better Clark who didn’t know how fast and hard her high-IQ passes came into their hands. Or to always have your head up and ready in transition, even if you don’t think you’re open. They had to step up and fill in as chemistry built between them.
Molly Davis, who transferred in 2022 from Central Michigan as a steady ball-handler (she leads the team in assist-to-turnover rate at +2.51), moved into a starter role and is hopeful to return after injuring her knee against Ohio State. Iowa said in a release the fifth-year senior will undergo physical therapy this week to “improve mobility for postseason play.”
Stuelke, the reigning Big Ten Sixth Player of the Year, faced one of the toughest tasks of any Iowa player. She took over the center position from Monika Czinano, a WNBA Draft pick with a lengthy resumé as one-half of the pick-and-roll happy “Law Firm” with Clark. In her first year as a starter, Stuelke has shown flashes of stardom and earned all-Big Ten second-team honors this week.
CLARK’S SUPPORTING CAST
Player Pts Reb Ast Stl
Iowa logo
H. Stuelke
IOWA – F
14.3 6.7 1.3 0.9
Iowa logo
K. Martin
IOWA – G
12.9 6.4 2.4 0.9
Iowa logo
S. Affolter
IOWA – G
7.6 6.4 2.3 1.1
Iowa logo
M. Davis
IOWA – G
6.1 2.6 3.1 0.7
Iowa logo
G. Marshall
IOWA – G
6 1 1.7 1.1
After Clark one-upped Stuelke’s career-high 47-point performance that featured 15 assists by the point guard, the two joked about going back-and-forth for Carver Hawkeye-Arena records. Clark, after scoring a historic 49 against Michigan, told a packed interview room that Stuelke “better break” the single-game record.
“I think that just speaks to our culture and the team coach Bluder has built here,” Clark said. “You just want to see your teammates succeed. I was so happy for [Stuelke] the other night. I’m perfectly fine with Hannah going out and scoring 50 next game. So hopefully she does that.”
Stuelke scoring half of Iowa’s average game total is only going to help Clark achieve her ultimate goal of winning an NCAA national championship. She has honored each record as it came, using it to shine attention on former record-holders and other top performers around the country. But a title still eludes her with only one chance left after she announced she would enter the WNBA Draft in April.
That, more than a scoring record, takes a team-wide effort. It begins on Friday with the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals (6:30 p.m. ET, Big Ten Network) when No. 2 seed Iowa plays the winner of No. 7 Penn State vs. No. 10 Wisconsin in Minneapolis. Tournament tickets sold out weeks ago as another entry of The Clark Effect that most recently led to a Travis Scott sighting in Iowa City.
After team photos with the Billboard chart topper and 20 minutes of autographs for fans hanging into the tunnel, Clark entered another full media room. Cameras lined the back wall and media members piled in for quotes about another record-breaking day and yet another 30-plus point outing.
Clark was asked how it came to be that four years ago she was playing in front of a cardboard cutout of her dog because of COVID-19 fan restrictions and now in a sold-out arena with Scott, four-time WNBA champion Maya Moore and Jake from State Farm courtside.
She loved every minute of it, she said. Through ups and downs, she said she matured to handle and balance the frenzy of attention.
And then there were her teammates, who also had to live up to that pressure cooker surrounding them and did it well. Carver-Hawkeye Arena is as loud for Clark’s points as they are for everyone else.
“You can just feel the energy and the joy and the excitement that our team plays with and that’s contagious,” Clark said. “That’s what’s been so fun about this whole ride is the style of basketball we play. People love it. They’re not just here for me. I’m sure I help, but at the end of the day, we have a really great team and a really great culture. And that’s what makes it so fun.”
Terms/Privacy PolicyPrivacy DashboardAbout Our Ads
The Independent
The Pointer wears Prada: Caitlin Clark stuns at WNBA draft
Brittany Miller
Tue, Apr 16, 2024, 3:30 PM GMT+1·3 min read
2
Caitlin Clark has been drafted in the WNBA in an enviable designer look.
The 22-year-old showed up to the Brooklyn Academy of Music for WNBA draft on Monday 15 April dressed completely in the brand Prada, where she was announced as the number one pick for the Indiana Fever.
For the occasion, Clark wore a Prada double white satin shirt and skirt. The former Iowa Hawkeyes player also unbuttoned her top to reveal an embroidered rhinestone mesh top underneath. Clark traded in her sneakers for black brushed leather slingback pumps. She accessorised with a black Galleria handbag, and acetate sunglasses.
While walking the red carpet prior to the draft, the basketball player told GQ Sports how much she loves the brand. “I love Prada. I think Prada is very me,” she told the outlet. “Prada’s never dressed a WNBA player or an NBA player for the draft, so it’s very fun.”
Stylist Adri Zgirdea Toth toldMarie Claire that she coordinated Clark’s look.
“Dressing an athlete for the draft is a first for Prada, and this is obviously a first for Caitlin, too. Both are at the forefront of what they do — it’s almost too perfect,” Toth said.
In an interview after taking the stage at New York City’s Brooklyn Academy of Music to accept her new jersey, Clark told ESPN she was “grateful” to be entering the WNBA, after foregoing her fifth year of college eligibility to enter the draft.
“I’ve dreamed of this moment since I was in second grade,” the Iowa native said. “It’s taken a lot of hard work, a lot of ups and downs, but more than anything I’m just trying to soak it in.”
“I told my mom before this, ‘I earned it,’ and that’s why I’m so proud of it,” she added.
Throughout her last college basketball season, Clark went on to receive multiple awards for her skills on the court, including the Women’s Basketball Superstar and National Player of the Year, making her one of the most successful players in the NCAA.
In February, Clark took to Instagram to share the news that she would be entering the draft. “It is impossible to fully express my gratitude to everyone who has supported me during my time at Iowa,” she wrote in her post. “My teammates, who made the last four years the best; my coaches, trainers, and staff who always let me be me; Hawkeye fans who filled Carver every night; and everyone who came out to support us across the country, especially young kids.”
Along with being the NCAA all-time leading scorer, Clark is also the first D1 player to “record 3,700+ points, 1,000+ assists, and 850+ rebounds in a career”. When the Hawkeyes won the 2023 Gulf Coast Showcase this past November, Clark was named the Tournament MVP.
Throughout Clark’s senior year at the University of Iowa, there’s been an increase of viewers tuning in for the games. As noted by the NCAA, the 2023 national championship game, which saw the Hawkeyes play against LSU’s Tigers, had an average of nearly 10 million viewers, which was a 103 per cent increase from the 2022 women’s championship.
Iowa’s games have been shown on multiple sports networks this season, including ESPN, Fox, and NBC. NCAA also reported that when one of Hawkeye’s games went into overtime, before Ohio State’s loss, there were an average of 1.93m viewers watching the game across NBC and Peacock. In addition, the game saw a peak in viewership during overtime, with 3.9m viewers across those networks.
