South Carolina coach Dawn Staley is one of the leading voices of women’s basketball, and she offered some of the highest praise to Iowa superstar Caitlin Clark on Friday.
Staley, the two-time national championship coach and six-time WNBA All-Star, called Clark, who recently broke the NCAA’s women’s Division I all-time career scoring record, perhaps the greatest player in the history of the sport.
‘I don’t think that record’s ever going to be broken again,’ Staley told reporters on Friday. ‘I don’t. Like, the clip that she scores, and she’s not done yet. Like, she’s probably got, I don’t know, 15 more games left in the season. And to do it, probably, 30, 40 points a clip, I mean, what we’re witnessing is something quite incredible.
‘I think she’s going to go down in the history books as probably, arguably, the best player to grace our collegiate sport.’
Clark scored a career-high 49 points in the Hawkeyes’ 106-89 win over Michigan on Thursday to pass Washington’s Kelsey Plum as the women’s all-time leading scorer in NCAA Division I history. The senior also dished 13 assists in the win.
The 6-foot guard leads the country in points per game (32.8) and assists per game (8.5) this season. She now sits at 3,569 career points, more than Plum’s 3,527.
The next record Clark could potentially break is the all-time Division I scoring record for both men’s and women’s college basketball. That mark has held steady for 54 years since LSU’s Pete Maravich set the mark with 3,667 career points from 1967-70. The 6-foot-5 guard averaged 44.2 points per game for his career, helping him set the current record in just three seasons.
That said, Clark’s 3,569 career points leave her well within striking distance of Maravich’s record: just 99 points away from setting the mark. Considering Clark is averaging 32.8 points per game, she could very well pass Maravich by the end of the regular season. Iowa has four games remaining before the Big Ten Tournament begins on March 6.
As Staley noted, Clark can further extend her record with four games remaining in the regular season; as many as three games in the Big Ten Tournament; and as many as six NCAA Tournament games. If Iowa manages to maximize the number of games they have left to play − and Clark continues to shoot as well as she has her entire career − she could come to own a long-standing record of her own.
Caitlin Clark stats
Career: 28.3 points, 8.1 assists, 7 rebounds
2023-24: 32.8 points, 8.5 assists, 6.9 rebounds
2022-23: 27.8 points, 8.6 assists, 7.1 rebounds
2021-22: 27 points, 8 assists, 8 rebounds
2020-21: 26.6 points, 7.1 assists, 5.9 rebounds