Caitlin Clark is the all-time main scorer in NCAA Division I basketball, ending her profession with 3,951 factors throughout 4 seasons.
Now, when she appears to be like again, she questions why she wasn’t guarded higher.
In a TIME interview with Sean Gregory, Clark famous simply how a lot larger the basketball IQ is within the WNBA than within the girls’s sport.
“Skilled gamers {and professional} coaches — that is no disrespect to varsity girls’s basketball — are quite a bit smarter,” Clark stated. “I really like girls’s faculty basketball. However when you return and watch the best way folks guarded me in faculty, it’s virtually, like, regarding. They didn’t double me, they didn’t lure me, they weren’t bodily.”
Clark acknowledged that most of the gamers she confronted weren’t persevering with their careers previous faculty, and that basketball IQ performed a job.
“Lots of these girls won’t ever go on to play one other basketball sport of their life,” Clark stated. “They don’t have the IQ of understanding how the sport works. So I fully perceive it. And it’s no disrespect in any respect. They don’t have the IQ. It’s a must to simplify it for ladies at that age.”
In her senior season, Clark averaged 32.1 factors, 8.5 assists, and seven.3 rebounds, recording six triple-doubles. Her 2024 event run was punctuated by a 41-point, 12-assist outing in an Elite Eight win over LSU. In that sport, she was primarily guarded by Hailey Van Lith, a 5’ 7 guard who clearly struggled to maintain up along with her.
On the time, many puzzled why LSU didn’t double-team her or put a extra bodily defender on her. The top end result was a 94-87 Iowa victory.
Now, we all know that Clark additionally typically puzzled about opposing groups’ and coaches’ lackluster schemes as nicely.
Clark struggled within the early days of her WNBA profession, however rapidly discovered her footing, occurring to common 19.2 factors, 8.4 assists, and 5.7 rebounds per sport. From the leap, she confronted a degree of physicality and defensive depth she not often confronted in faculty.
In her TIME interview with Gregory, an NCAA girls’s basketball sport between USC and Ole Miss was becoming enjoying within the background.
“I really feel like if I used to be on the market, I might actually have 50 [points],” Clark stated. “The school sport is a lot simpler than skilled.”
