Waiting for Tonight
A NOTE FROM THE WRITER: While disKCovery has always been about Kansas City, sometimes a guy just has to write. And in the hours before #1 Iowa and #3 Connecticut tip-off in the Women’s Final Four, the anticipation has been killing me. As someone who has ridden this Iowa bandwagon for a few years, but long followed the team, I had to put pen to paper. And hey, Caitlin Clark is a Chiefs fan and once even played for a Sporting Kansas City academy team in Iowa. That has to count for something, right?
On February 11, 2024 (Super Bowl Sunday), I took my mom to Lincoln, Nebraska to watch Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes face off against Nebraska. While Iowa lost, Clark would record her 1,000th career assist in this game. PHOTO CREDIT - disKCovery
Published April 5, 2024
I remember the first time that my mom told me about Caitlin Clark.
Those who know me, know of my passion for sports. The competition, the near-meritocracy of it all, the storylines, the drama, the incredible athleticism, the fanfare and pageantry of it all, the potential for bringing people together; I love nearly everything about sports. What many may not know is that I came by much of my passion honesty, as my mom is also very much a sports fan herself.
For as long as I have been alive, she has been as devoted an Iowa Hawkeyes’ fan as you will find. She has always found time for football games and both basketball teams. Always willing to tune in to any event where student athletes donned the Tiger Hawk, it has always seemed that the women’s basketball team is where her fandom really lies. I have long heard about C. Vivian Stringer, then Lisa Bluder, and the Iowa Hawkeyes’ women.
While I have always enjoyed women’s basketball, and supported my own Alma Maters, my following of the sport at a Division I level has been rather casual. However, Iowa athletics, particularly basketball, had long been a topic of conversation between us. Of all my brothers, I was the one who most followed the sport.
Then a few years back, something happened. The University of Iowa landed one of the top recruits in the nation. The Hawkeyes had produced a number of great players, even national award winners, but something about this was different. There was a level of expectation that surrounded this particular recruit. It was a rather big get for Coach Lisa Bluder and her squad. Then again, the phenom from Des Moines had always wanted to play for her home-state Hawkeyes.
From the first time she donned the black and gold in the fall of 2020, it was obvious that this young woman was special. #22 just seemed capable of things that had never been seen before. A few years earlier, Megan Gustafson had been the Naismith Player of the Year for the Hawkeyes and I could hear it in my mom’s voice, Caitlin was DIFFERENT. From that moment on, she would not shut up about Caitlin Clark.
Now that same year, another freshman burst on to the scene. While my mom and Iowa fans were talking nonstop about Clark, they were the only ones. From a national perspective, it was this other freshman getting the media’s attention, and deservedly so! It made sense.
She had been the number one rated player in the class coming out of high school. This player was doing things just as incredible as Caitlin Clark (different but equally amazing) and she was doing it on a much larger stage. See, this woman, Paige Bueckers wasn’t playing for “flyover Iowa”, she was suiting up for the bluest of bloods; perhaps the greatest powerhouse in the history of modern college sports. It felt like Bueckers would be the next all-time great to play for Geno Auriemma and the UConn Huskies.
Few may remember it now, but during that first season, Caitlin Clark was largely an unknown. You could sense this current era of women’s college basketball coming but it had not quite yet arrived. While Clark would lead all of Division I in scoring, and finish second in assists, and share a number of honors with Bueckers that year, it was the freshman for Connecticut that received the limelight.
When national media did talk about Caitlin Clark, it seemed only a means to drum up the sport and position the two as bitter rivals. The 1980s had Magic and Bird. The 2000s had Brady and Manning. The 2020s were going to give us Caitlin versus Paige. It had the potential to be good TV. The two were positioned as arch nemeses.
The truth is, they were actually longtime friends. Clark is from Iowa and Bueckers is from Edina, Minnesota. They both grew up idolizing, and dreaming of playing for, the Minnesota Lynx of the WNBA. Clark dreamed of being Maya Moore, the Lynx’ star player; Bueckers chose to attend Moore’s school. Not only did they run in similar circles, but had been teammates on a few occasions in the years before each headed off to college.
After incredible freshman campaigns by both, Iowa and Connecticut met in the Sweet 16. Connecticut, as always was expected to be there, and Iowa seemed to arrive even earlier than expected. Bueckers had the better team and UConn won by 20. Still, it seemed clear that great things were coming. This was but the first chapter in what would become a storied rivalry.
We all expected to see Clark and Bueckers square off again, and again, and again. We were promised multiple sequels and yet, one never came.
In their sophomore year? Caitlin Clark and her Hawkeyes were unexpectedly knocked out in the second round by Creighton. (And my own heart was broken as Paige Bueckers impressed in a hard-fought second round win over my UCF Knights)
And in their junior year? We got an early season clash between Iowa and Connecticut. While the Huskies beat the Hawkeyes for a second time, they did it without Bueckers. She had been sidelined for the season with a torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament).
It was that year, last year, while Bueckers rehabbed that the game captured a new audience. The women’s tournament was finally permitted to call itself “March Madness” and this would be the year that the tournament would begin to, finally, be perceived as an equally quality product. WIth Bueckers nowhere to be seen, Caitlin Clark and her three point shots from “Curry Range” grabbed all the headlines. Dawn Staley and the undefeated South Carolina Gamecocks seemed poised to be the new power in the sport. At the end of the season, Clark would lead the Hawkeyes to their first-ever national championship appearance where they would fall to LSU. Suddenly, Iowa’s rivals had shifted from the North Atlantic to the Gulf Coast.
Getting to see Clark and the Hawkeyes play in-person is something I won’t soon forget. PHOTO CREDIT - disKCovery
Finally, women’s basketball had what the men’s game has lost. Returning stars, heroes, villains, and storylines that could draw a crowd. In all of this, nobody had forgotten about Paige Bueckers and the Huskies. It was just that her greatness had preceded much of the public interest.
I remember that first season though, hearing my mom talk all about Caitlin and this team, and even talking about Paige and UConn.
She is the one who first told me this story. She put these two amazing women on my radar. She took women’s college basketball from something that I would watch and turned it into appointment television. It was so much more than just Caitlin Clark, the superstar scorer and almost magical facilitator who seemed to raise the level of every person she played with.
It was the hard-nosed floor general Kate Martin who seemed to hold them all together. It was Gabbie Marshall, or as I liked to call her, “The Ghost”. She didn’t always appear on the stat sheets but played the kind of defense that was certain to haunt the dreams of whoever she guarded. She did the background dirty work needed to win big games while also having that ability to drill a timely three. It was the versatile big Monika Czinano who seemed the perfect Robin to Clark’s Batman. (This year, it’s been the soft-handed, rim-running Hannah Stuelke who replaced her in the starting line-up after Czinano graduated.)
Iowa was not my school but became a team I had to watch. All of a sudden, it was not always my mom steering the conversation to Iowa’s women. I was fully ingrained.
And while I typically find myself a hater of any supposed sports power, it was hard not to similarly tune in for Paige Bueckers and the Huskies during that first season. Both of these young women were, and are, phenomenal athletes.
It just felt like back then that if women’s basketball was ever going to truly take flight, these women would be the ones to usher in that era. I remember the first time I heard my mom talk about Caitlin Clark because I sensed just how special she was, before I had ever seen her play.
We were supposed to enjoy this rivalry for years to come. Instead, the journey took a route wildly different than what was expected.
Clark became the superstar. She captured the imaginations of a fledgling fanbase that the sport had long waited for. Arenas sold out for the first time in the hopes of catching a glimpse of her. She became not only the face of women’s college basketball, but college hoops in general. She claimed the all-time records and entered the GOAT (greatest of all time) debates. It is now Caitlin Clark who garners all the media attention, and the stage is larger than it’s ever been.
Still, Paige Bueckers has wowed throughout this tourney. While she may be the latest face of the sport’s premier program, the path which UConn has taken and the adversity they have overcome has the Huskies almost feeling like a bit of an underdog. The player who was once ranked number one, somehow seems overlooked.
While it’s Clark who has won the awards and is the household name, the truth is that Paige Bueckers is just as good of a player as Clark. Some even, like her own coach, claim Bueckers is better. That can be left for the talking heads to debate as these two competitors don’t seem to care. They are great friends and have been on record as cheering for one another every step of the way. That is until now. After all, they are the fiercest of competitiors.
While the story has not followed the script we expected, it has ended up exactly where it was always supposed to be. It comes down to tonight. This game. The Final Four in Cleveland. In the home of the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, these two rock stars take center stage.
In one corner, we have Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes. They just vanquished the rival that people know and now turn their eyes to that first rivalry of Caitlin’s career. Clark and company hope that the third time is indeed the charm. They play to punch their ticket to Sunday’s championship, and then hoist the first national title in program history, the Hawkeyes aim to make history.
On the other hand, Paige Bueckers, hopes to continue it. Standing in the shadows of Taurasi, Bird, and Moore, Bueckers hopes that the clock strikes 12 on Clark’s career before she gets the chance to bring a 12th championship to Storrs.
This matchup, and the game that precedes it between the surprising NC State Wolfpack and the undefeated South Carolina Gamecocks, are packed with storylines, but none are bigger than this.
This is the kind of night that sports fans dream of. It has the potential to be the kind of night that sports fans talk about for years to come.
For those who have loved this game and followed these two incredible athletes and their teams, we have been waiting a long time for this game. We’ve been on the edge of our seats for three years, waiting for tonight.
For those who are more recent to the game and will hopefully help make tonight another record-breaking viewership for the sport, get your popcorn ready.
In just a few hours, Iowa meets Connecticut. Lisa Bluder squares off against Geno Auriemma. A Midwestern upstart clashes with coastal elite. Tonight, for the second and final time as collegians, Caitlin Clark and Paige Bueckers meet on the court.
While only one of these two incredible athletes will leave the arena a victor, every person who helped build this sport and get it to this stage, and all of us who witness such greatness, will all be winners.
Whether you have looked forward to this matchup for years, or just a few days, it’s nearly here.
It’s almost time.
Greatness awaits.
P.S. - Go Hawks!
Where are you watching tonight’s Women’s Final Four games? Are you cheering for Iowa or Connecticut? South Carolina or NC State? Share your thoughts below!
