Iowa basketball sensation Caitlin Clark chooses to forego next season and pursue the WNBA draft.
IOWA CITY, Iowa— Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, who is on the verge of becoming the all-time NCAA scoring leader in college basketball, said on Thursday that she will leave the Hawkeyes after this season to join the WNBA draft.
“While this season is far from over and we still have a lot of goals to accomplish, it will be my final one at Iowa,” Clark said in a post on the X social networking site. She praised her teammates, coaches, and the thousands of fans that filled stadiums throughout the country to see her and the Hawkeyes, who are ranked sixth.
Clark became as a focal point for women’s basketball, thanks to her spectacular play and 3-point shot, which frequently came from the on-court logo. Many players would have been benched for shooting from such a long distance, but Clark was given the go-ahead by her coach, and she delivered while also finding her teammates and hitting the boards.
With one more year of eligibility, the guard passed Lynette Woodard to become the all-time top women’s scorer in major college basketball, scoring 33 points and posting her 17th career triple-double in a 108-60 victory over Minnesota on Wednesday night.
Clark also shattered the NCAA single-season record in 2023-24, nailing eight 3-pointers for 156 points. She now has 3,650 career points. Woodard scored 3,649 points at Kansas from 1977 to 1981, before the NCAA sanctioned the sport. Clark just beat Kelsey Plum’s NCAA scoring record (3,527 points).
Pete Maravich holds the overall NCAA scoring record, which she trails by only 17 points.
