Tonight thousands of boys and girls will fall asleep dreaming of leading their home state college to glory. The vast majority will never reach those lofty dreams.

Few become elite-level college athletes. Of those that do, most end up at out-of-state colleges. Just four of the top 30 recruits in ESPN’s Class of 2020 committed to a home state school. Six of 30 did so in ESPN's Class of 2023.

That is especially true for states that don’t have a blue blood program like Connecticut, California, Tennessee, or more recently South Carolina.

On Saturday (1 PM CT, BTN), Iowa and Minnesota will be led by two star players that decided to stay home. Caitlin Clark has already lived many of her childhood dreams at Iowa. At Minnesota, Mara Braun is trying to forge her own happy ending after a rocky start.

“I was once that little Iowa girl,” Clark says at the open of her first Gatorade commercial. Four years ago, few outside of Iowa knew Clark’s name. Now she’s one of the most marketable athletes in sports.

Iowa itself has played a key role in Clark's development into a box office superstar. But most don't know that Clark almost wasn't a Hawkeye at all.

On the weekend of October 18th, 2019, Clark took a visit to Notre Dame. Sometime that weekend, she verbally committed to join the Irish.

"I remember the day that she originally committed to Notre Dame was the hardest practice of my life," Monika Czinano said. "The coaches were so pissed. They didn't tell us up front about it, but we knew."

For Clark, doubts about her commitment to Notre Dame lingered. She never announced her commitment publicly.

“I can remember sitting in [Clark's] living room and her saying I want to go to the Final Four,” coach Lisa Bluder said after Iowa’s Elite Eight victory over Louisville. “And I’m saying we can do it together. And she believed me.”

Notre Dame won the national championship in 2018. The Irish advanced to their ninth Final Four in 2019. If Clark went to Notre Dame, a Final Four in her time there seemed likely. But it would be just one of many. One drawback of sustained success is that the memory of each great season isn’t quite as strong.

At Iowa, Clark could forge her own path. She could take the Hawkeyes to their first Final Four since 1993. Perhaps she could even take the program to new heights. Do something truly special that her state would remember forever.

Ultimately the dream Clark and Bluder forged in her living room won out. Clark committed to Iowa on November 12, 2019.

Iowa's practice that day went much better. "The day she committed was rainbows and sunshine and everybody was so happy," Czinano said. They knew the best was yet to come.

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After Iowa’s win over Virginia Tech this year, Scott Van Pelt said on SportsCenter that Clark “has the greenest light in the history of basketball.” That green light is a big part of what makes Clark must watch television.

Clark plays basketball with an audacity rarely seen in sports. Logo threes? She shoots them regularly. She’ll shoot from anywhere at any time.

Highlight reel passes? You’ll see at least one or two per game. Clark tries to thread a needle from anywhere. Sometimes no one, not even her teammates, are expecting a pass.

For good measure, Clark is also one of the best dribblers in the country. She routinely weaves her way through the lane to get to the basket. Clark’s drives more than anything helped Iowa shock South Carolina in the Final Four last year.

As impressive as Clark is, she wouldn’t have been allowed to play with such freedom at most colleges.

It took a coach like Bluder who was willing to hand Clark the keys to the offense from her first moment on campus. A coach that lived with the bad because she knew that the good would far outweigh it. That realized Clark would grow and improve best only by pushing the very limits of what her talent could achieve.

"Coach Bluder has allowed me to thrive and be who I am," Clark said. "That’s one of the reasons I came to Iowa...she doesn’t handcuff me to running a play every single time down the floor or being somebody that I’m not."

It also took a roster like Iowa’s that wasn’t loaded with 5-stars. Czinano was a great post, but to be the best version of herself she needed another scorer to occupy defenders and a guard that could get her the ball in great positions. In Clark she found both.

Kate Martin, Gabbie Marshall, and McKenna Warnock were great shooters, but needed space to shoot well. With Clark, their defenders always had to play off to slow Clark down. When they did, Clark was ready to make a perfect pass out to a shooter.

Contrast Clark’s experience with that of Paige Bueckers. Bueckers, a fellow point guard, was the #1 rated recruit in Clark’s Class of 2020. She went to UConn and won National Player of the Year as a freshman. That season, she shot 46.4% from 3-point range, 55.2% from 2-point range, and averaged 5.8 assists.

She also only averaged 14.6 shots per game. She couldn’t take more than that. UConn had other players that needed to get their shots. That could create on their own without her help.

Clark averaged 18.8 shots per game as a freshman, along with 7.1 assists. For Iowa’s offense, she did everything.

Clark would’ve been a great player at UConn, Notre Dame, or any of the other big schools that wanted her. But she also would’ve been more limited. She would’ve had to default more to star teammates and rein in some of her wild shots and passes.

At Iowa, Clark got to push to her limit because Iowa needed her limit to win.

"Whenever I score 40 points, we lose," Clark said after Iowa's loss to North Carolina State on December 1, 2022. The loss dropped the Hawkeyes to 5-3 overall. Clark's time at Iowa was at a crossroads. The public just didn't know it.

At that point, Iowa had its fair share of success. A share of the Big Ten regular season title. A Big Ten Tournament. A #2 seed in the NCAA Tournament. But Iowa also hadn't come close to Clark's Final Four dream. A second round home loss to Creighton dashed the hopes of the 2021-2022 Hawkeyes. Now the 2022-2023 season was also off to a rocky start.

Clark believes the NC State game was a turning point: "[L]ast year, some of those hard losses we had at the beginning of the year, whether it’s K-State or NC State, those are honestly the reason that we were a whole lot better and had hard conversations and grew as a team."

One of the big conversations Clark referenced occurred on December 3, 2022 and was recently uploaded to YouTube. Martin started the meeting with an honest message that the team needed to hear: “This is my fifth year being here. I’ve been apart of many teams… this is not the best team chemistry I’ve [had].”

From there, the rest of the team opened up. The main issue was finding the right balance between Clark attacking and getting everyone involved. "We're not going to win a championship with just two players," Martin said. Iowa was losing winnable games because Clark was trying to do too much.

The conversation was emotional. Players took blame for not stepping up. Clark shared some of her struggles: "I've had some very, very hard days, especially in the past... You guys probably think it's great, like I'm on ESPN all the time. I'm on SportsCenter all the time. Like that's cool. You probably all wish you had that too. Like it's awesome. It can only last for one day. And then I'm back here the next morning and I get yelled at. I get held accountable. It's hard. But that's what you get when you're the best player"

She vented her frustrations: "I didn't want to be our savior versys NC State... but... when I look around and everybody's just a blank stare and doesn't look like they want to play basketball today, so that only leaves me one option. And I don't want that."

She also shared a message of unity: "I just want you to know that I believe and I trust you."

Tough conversations can divide a locker room. They can make people dig in and set in their ways. Or they can lead to growth. Change. Becoming better together.

Clark moved beyond that rough patch and did something extraordinary: she took her game to another level. In the process, she helped elevate her teammates as well.

Clark scored 40 points three more times last season. Iowa won each of the games, including an Elite Eight victory over Louisville and a Final Four victory over South Carolina. Clark also averaged 9.3 assists in those games. Iowa and Clark had found the balance they needed to make Clark's dream come true.

Mara Braun had options. The 6’0" shooting guard from Wayzata, Minnesota was ESPN’s #28 ranked player in the Class of 2022. She held offers from Iowa, Maryland, Oregon State, and Michigan.

Ultimately, Braun chose Minnesota instead. “I always dreamt of it,” she said shortly after committing. “I went to Gopher games as a kid and just to have this all become a reality is pretty cool.”

Another big reason for Braun’s commitment was Minnesota coach Lindsay Whalen. Braun’s childhood dream undoubtedly involved leading Minnesota back to the Final Four. Moving onto the WNBA. Maybe even making the United States Olympic team. Whalen had already lived all of it.

Whalen was born in Hutchinson, Minnesota just outside Minneapolis and committed to her home state Minnesota Gophers to play college basketball. At Minnesota, she became the program’s all-time leading scorer and took Minnesota to the Final Four in 2004. After college, Whalen spent 15 seasons in the WNBA, winning four titles with her home-state Minnesota Lynx. She also won two Olympic gold medals with the United States national team.

When Braun committed, she dreamed of recreating the magic of Whalen’s 2004 Final Four. “They had a bunch of Minnesota kids,” Braun said of Whalen’s team. “I want to be a part of that, of Minnesota girls coming here. That's an experience I want to be a part of.”

Braun also seemed to be entering a great situation when she committed in November 2020. Her recruiting class became the highest rated in program history. Braun and her fellow freshman could mix in with the core Whalen was building and begin elevating the program back to the heights it had once achieved.

Unfortunately for Braun, Minnesota hit a rough patch even before she arrived on campus. Minnesota finished the 2020-21 season 8-13. The 2021-22 season wasn’t much of an improvement, as the Gophers went 15-18 overall and finished 10th in the Big Ten.

After the season, six Gophers entered the transfer portal. Minnesota’s roster was briefly down to just three players.

Braun and her freshman teammates wouldn’t mix in with Minnesota’s core now. They were the core. And Whalen herself was on the hot seat after four lackluster seasons and the transfer portal exodus.

Predictably, Minnesota struggled in the 2022-23 season. Braun averaged 15.6 points per game, but was inefficient from the field. Minnesota surrendered a horrid 73.6 points per game, good for 343rd nationally. Overall, the Gophers finished 11-19 and missed out on another postseason. Whalen was fired shortly after the Gophers' loss in the Big Ten Tournament.

No one would’ve blamed Braun for transferring from Minnesota. Her coach was gone. Minnesota’s second leading scorer—Rose Micheaux—entered the portal and eventually transferred to Virginia Tech. Braun would’ve had plenty of suitors better situated than Minnesota for postseason success.

Instead, Braun vowed to continue on her journey at Minnesota. "We came here to represent the state and turn the program around,” Braun said in a statement confirming she wouldn’t transfer. “I intend to help finish what we started.”

Twelve games into the 2023-2024 season, and Braun’s decision to stay at Minnesota has worked better than most could’ve expected. The Gophers have already matched their win total from last year and sit 11-1 overall. Their only loss was to UConn early in the season. They are also receiving votes in the latest AP Poll.

A big reason for the Gophers’ turnaround has been on the defensive end. The Gophers came into the Iowa game surrendering 54.5 points per game this season, good for 28th nationally. That’s a 19.1 point improvement from last year

Another reason for the turnaround is Braun herself.

Braun’s stats have gone up across the board on both ends of the floor. Last year, she was the best player on an overmatched team. This year, she’s one of the best players in the country.

HerHoopStats.com measures a statistic called Win Shares that attempts to place a value on all of a player’s contributions to a game and compare that to other players nationally. Clark unsurprisingly leads the nation by a decent margin. Two other Iowa opponents—Ayoka Lee of Kansas State and Elizabeth Kitley of Virginia Tech—rank 2nd and tied for 10th respectively. Braun is also tied for 10th.

With Braun's growth and Minnesota's team improvements under first year coach Dawn Plitzuweit, the Gophers look poised to elevate the program again as Braun intended when she committed more than three years ago.

Clark and Braun both chose similar paths -- to stay close to home and try to elevate their home-state teams to greatness. Clark is further along that path and has done just that in her remarkable 3.5 year career at Iowa so far. Braun's journey has been rockier, but has taken a big step forward this season. On Saturday, their paths will cross one more time in Iowa City.