Caitlin Clark is The Moment, in every sense of the word. She is college basketball’s biggest star, and I excluded the word “women’s” from that statement for a reason. She is blowing away records and turning the sport inside-out.
And Iowa will not win the 2024 national championship.
Clark and the Hawkeyes fell short against LSU in last year’s national title game, losing 102-85 despite a 30-point performance from their superstar. LSU beat Iowa at the boards, out-rebounding them 37-26 to make a world of difference. Iowa’s weaknesses have been exposed again this season, and they look all too familiar.
Clark goes cold? The Hawkeyes have virtually no backup plan. A team has multiple scorers in the paint and can run up the opposing score? The Hawkeyes can only hope to lean on her in a shootout. When Iowa meets a more evenly distributed and defensively talented team late in the tournament, it’s not going to be good news.
Clark averages 32.8 points, which means that if she goes cold, gets injured, or has foul trouble, the next three highest scorers on the roster will all need to double their scoring production to make up for their absence. Lexi Affolter, Hannah Stuelke, and Kate Martin add up to an average of 34.8 points per game between the three of them.
The Hawkeyes have been out-rebounded in two of their three losses this season against Nebraska and Ohio State. The issue with having your tallest player shoot from the perimeter is that she isn’t down low to grab the shots that don’t fall. Ohio State also beat Iowa from the three-point line.
In their loss against Kansas State in November, the Hawkeyes went ice cold from downtown, and Caitlin Clark’s 24 points were well below average. It’s not that the people around Clark are bad or untalented or don’t have the potential to excel on the court — it’s that the team refuses to stray from their one-track Clark mind.
As she went cold against Nebraska in the fourth quarter, head coach Lisa Bluder kept feeding her the ball for missed shot after missed shot. They do not have the playcalls nor the willingness to try something different or to surprise an opponent with a varied approach, and that is the reason that this Iowa team will fall short in the playoffs yet again.
It’s often the curse of the One Talent — as last year’s Purdue team met the same fate with Zach Edey in the first round. Don’t expect Iowa to go home after 40 minutes, but they won’t cut down the nets in Cleveland.
At DraftKings Sportsbook, Iowa is tied for second on the odds board at +800 to win the 2024 NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship, the same price as LSU. South Carolina at +120 is the favorite.