Caitlin Clark eclipsed another scoring milestone Tuesday night, inching her one step closer to college basketball immortality. The Iowa Hawkeyes took care of business at home against Wisconsin, cruising to a 96-50 victory. Clark put up a game-high 32 points, passing Baylor’s Brittney Griner (3,283 points) for fourth on the all-time scoring list before the first half was even over.
Clark referred to the moment as “kind of full circle” after the game, per ESPN. Clark saw Griner and the Baylor Bears play in an NCAA Tournament regional final in 2012 in Des Moines.
“I was still pretty young,” said Clark. “I think that was (Tennessee coach) Pat Summitt’s last game, I do remember that. That’s like my core memory of Brittney Griner. Just to be in the same vicinity of some of those names is super special. It’s cool, they’re people I grew up watching. So it’s special.”
With 3,306 career points, the Iowa senior is well within reach of breaking the all-time scoring record by the end of the regular season. Clark sits just 221 points behind Washington’s Kelsey Plum (3,527 points) and needs to average just over 20 points per game over Iowa’s final 11 regular season games to take the scoring title.
Already averaging 31.0 points per game through the Hawkeye’s first 19 games this season, Clark is on pace to shatter that record well before the Big Ten tournament begins in March. At her current pace, she would break it sometime during Iowa’s game on the road against Indiana University on February 22.
In fact, Clark isn’t just coming for Plum’s record – she might take Pistol Pete’s, too. LSU’s Pete Maravich holds the men’s all-time points record with 3,667, doing so in a ludicrous 83 games before the implementation of the three-point arc. Clark would need to slightly up her season average to lock that record up by Iowa’s senior day, but would almost certainly eclipse it during the Big Ten tournament if all holds.
Clark also tied LSU’s Temeka Johnson for eighth all-time on the women’s assists leaderboard at 945. Averaging 7.7 assists per game this season, she could become just the sixth woman in college basketball history with 1,000 career assists.
Despite rewriting the history books, Clark has learned to just appreciate her final games with the Hawkeyes.
“It’s hard for me to wrap my head around all of it,” she said Tuesday night. “I’m just trying to stay in the moment, enjoy every single second of it.”
