College Basketball’s Greatest Player Just Showed Why America Is Hooked on Her

Caitlin Clark is the greatest player in college basketball. But that was also true in 2023, and when Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes met the LSU Tigers in the national championship game, her greatness was unable to counteract the brutal officiating, and she was in unfair foul trouble throughout the game. LSU rose above the fray, and the game’s defining star was Tigers forward Angel Reese, not Clark. If there was a lesson from LSU’s 102–85 pull-away win last year, it was that having a force of nature isn’t always enough.

But sometimes it is. The LSU-Iowa rematch on Monday, in the Elite Eight in Albany, may have been the most anticipated women’s game of all time. The two teams’ formulas were not all that different from what they were a year ago. Iowa had Clark and a bunch of teammates who tried hard. LSU had Reese headlining a much deeper roster that had five other double-figure scorers, including white-hot shooter Flau’jae Johnson and double-double-averaging forward Aneesah Morrow. Even a player as great as Clark is not always the whole ballgame. But absent officiating hijinks and with a bit of good fortune, she really might be the whole thing most nights. And on Monday she was: No. 1–seeded Iowa 94, No. 3 LSU 87. The Hawkeyes will play in the Final Four next weekend, and Clark will remain the buzziest athlete in America for a little bit longer.

What was different on Monday? For one thing, Clark stayed on the floor. She played all 40 minutes and scored 41 points in them, making nine of her 20 3s. In last year’s title game, Clark played 35 minutes, but they were tentative minutes, as she had to worry about fouling out. That particularly hurt her on defense, and LSU scored into the triple digits. This time around, Clark had no foul trouble (two in total) and was able to be the aggressor, not the aggressed.

There are no good strategies for keeping up with Clark. But there are bad ones. At the least, there are strategies that are not so much schemes as prayers. And it was a prayer that LSU settled on for Monday night. Some teams try to force Clark to her left. Some try to tire her out by running her in circles on defense. Some play zone. Some cycle through different defenders. None of it is likely to work, but all of it is more defensible than Clark herself.

For most of the night, coach Kim Mulkey dispatched guard Hailey Van Lith to chase Clark around. From the game’s opening possession, on which Clark hit one of her trademark long 3-pointers, it was clear that the Van Lith plan would not work. A year ago, it was not in the cards when Van Lith played for Louisville and the Cardinals faced the Hawkeyes in the Elite Eight. Van Lith is one of several defenders who show up all over that game’s highlight tape, mostly covering other players but sometimes darting toward Clark as the superstar torched Louisville en route to hitting the same mark she hit on Monday: 41 points. Louisville hadn’t tried to contain Clark with Van Lith, who’s shorter and slower than Clark.

Mulkey opted for a more exclusive strategy, leaving Van Lith virtually alone in trying to guard Clark, and it went as well as the Titanic’s trip to New York.* Van Lith appeared to have the same chance a scout team player would have. Clark tore around her at will and casually launched 3s over her head. Mulkey—an accomplished tactician of basketball if not defamation law—gave Van Lith a few respites, but not many. The coach handed her player the sport’s hardest assignment, but it did not go well, and the coach did not correct course after she floundered.

Clark had a feast. It’s not quite right to say she was a one-woman wrecking crew, but most of her teammates were just a small step removed from spectators. Clark’s scoring 41 of the team’s 94 points isn’t even the strongest evidence. She also had 12 assists. The Hawkeyes made exactly nine shots from the field that didn’t come from Clark’s shot or pass. Kate Martin’s 21 points on 16 shots and Sydney Affolter’s 16 on 10 were both good, businesslike performances and a welcome departure from frequent big games in which Clark has had less help. But that 37 points from two other players felt like an offensive explosion from the supporting cast to make the point about how much Clark carries.

LSU had 14 second-chance points (to Iowa’s 5) and 11 second-chance points (to Iowa’s 6). The Hawkeyes’ bigs allowed 23 offensive rebounds, while Iowa got six. Physically speaking, the non-Clark Hawkeyes found themselves more or less dominated. Clark’s seven rebounds from the backcourt led the team for good measure, while Reese had 20 boards for LSU.

All year, Clark has defied gravity. She personally makes sure that more people watch Iowa games, in person and on TV, than many ever thought possible for women’s hoops. At a time when every sports league except the NFL has to fret about keeping people’s attention, Clark is an eyeball magnet. When the television ratings for Monday’s game come out, they are all but certain to shatter records.

The fuss around Clark has gotten so big that she now attracts a level of discourse—that is to say, a low one—previously reserved for the major pro sports and college football. Hours before the game, Stephen A. Smith claimed on ESPN that a loss would tarnish Clark’s legacy. Media outlets spilled infinite digital ink about the rivalry between Clark and Reese, which has very little personal juice behind it but featured big enough characters to be a story anyway. Many poorly adjusted people tried to frame Iowa against LSU as a battle of good vs. evil, putting the thinnest veil possible on a matchup between a team with a white star and a team with several Black ones.

Many of the discussions around this game were dumb. But in a sign of the sport’s growth, they were unavoidable over the past few days to anyone who follows sports news. Clark has always had a superpower for scoring, but here she revealed an ability to shut down a carnival.

Some people loaded up LSU and Iowa with symbolism. Others speculated about what it would mean for Clark if she couldn’t drag a less talented team to victory. And on that score, nobody had to find out. Because in the biggest game since the last time Clark played LSU, she scored so many points and threw so many sublime passes that college basketball again bent to her will. There are other great stories in college basketball right now, but Clark has the power to blot them out with brute force. Buckets will continue until morale improves—or until Clark gets into irredeemable foul trouble.