Iowa’s Caitlin Clark passes Pete Maravich for Div. I scoring mark

IOWA CITY, Iowa — Caitlin Clark has joked about being nicknamed “Ponytail Pete” in recognition of how her sport resembles that of “Pistol Pete” Maravich.

On Sunday in her final regular-season house sport, the Iowa Hawkeyes star handed the LSU and NBA legend for essentially the most factors scored by a Division I basketball participant, males’s or girls’s.

On senior day at Carver-Hawkeye Enviornment, Clark entered the sport towards Huge Ten regular-season champion Ohio State needing 18 factors to move Maravich, who scored 3,667 factors in his three seasons at LSU from 1967 to ’70.

Clark did it with 0.3 seconds remaining earlier than halftime with two free throws.

It has been a record-setting season for Clark, who introduced Thursday she wouldn’t use the COVID-19 waiver from 2020-21 for a fifth season at Iowa and as a substitute would enter the 2024 WNBA draft. That introduced an additional poignancy to senior day, which she shared with teammates Kate Martin, Gabbie Marshall, Molly Davis and Sharon Goodman. Clark, a local of West Des Moines, has been a particular favourite of Hawkeyes followers not simply due to her nice play, however as a result of she’s a local of the state who stayed “house” for faculty.

As with each Iowa house sport this season and lots of highway video games, it was a sellout, with followers arriving early within the morning to participate in ESPN’s “School GameDay.” An additional shock for Clark was former UConn Huskies and Minnesota Lynx star Maya Moore, who was Clark’s favourite participant as a baby, in attendance.

Till Thursday, it wasn’t sure whether or not Clark would go away after 4 seasons or keep at Iowa to actually put most scoring and assists data out of attain with one other faculty season.

However even in the usual profession time, Clark has set a number of data:

• On Dec. 6, she hit the three,000-point mark at Iowa State.

• On Feb. 11 at Nebraska, she reached the 1,000-assist mark, making her the primary Division I girls’s participant to have each 3,000 factors and 1,000 assists.

• On Feb. 15 in Iowa Metropolis, Clark handed Washington’s Kelsey Plum, who scored 3,527 factors from 2013 to ’17, for the NCAA girls’s scoring report with a 49-point efficiency that additionally set Iowa’s single-game program report.

• Feb. 28 at Minnesota, Clark handed Kansas’ Lynette Woodard for the major-college girls’s scoring report with a 33-point efficiency that was a part of her seventeenth profession triple-double. Woodard performed simply earlier than the NCAA period, scoring 3,649 factors from 1977-81 when girls’s faculty sports activities was ruled by the AIAW. Woodard was in attendance at Sunday’s sport and obtained a standing ovation from the gang when she was launched at halfcourt throughout the first quarter.

• Additionally, in that victory over the Gophers, Clark hit eight 3-pointers, giving her 156 for the season, one other Division I report. Clark’s six triple-doubles of a minimum of 30 factors are additionally essentially the most in D-I historical past.

Pearl Moore, who performed at Francis Marion from 1975-79, holds the AIAW small-college girls’s report with 3,884. However in phrases or main faculty/Division I males or girls, Clark now stands alone.

Maravich, Moore and Woodard all performed earlier than the 3-point line was applied in faculty basketball. And Maravich’s profession was earlier than freshman eligibility in faculty sports activities, so he was restricted to 83 video games over his three seasons. That mentioned, he averaged 38.1 pictures per sport in his profession. Coming into Sunday, Clark has averaged 19.9 pictures per sport at Iowa.

Clark is the overwhelming favourite to be repeat as nationwide participant of the yr and be the No. 1 choose within the WNBA draft by the Indiana Fever. She is also on monitor to guide the nation in scoring for the third time (as a freshman, sophomore and senior) and to guide the nation in scoring and assists for the second time (as a sophomore and senior). She can be the primary participant in Division I historical past to do both of these issues.