Caitlin Clark Sets NCAA Career Scoring Record
3,528. It's official: no one in the history of NCAA women's college basketball has scored more points in a career than Caitlin Clark. Clark broke the record previously held by Washington star Kelsey Plum, who scored 3,527 points in over 139 games from 2013 through 2017. Incredibly, Clark set the record in 13 fewer games than Plum.
Since she arrived at Iowa in the fall of 2020, Caitlin Clark has been rewriting record books at the school, conference, and national levels with her remarkable play. The Iowa career scoring record (2,804 points) fell in November, shattered in just over three seasons by the irrepressible Clark. The Big Ten career scoring record (3,402 points) fell a few weeks ago, when Clark surpassed former Ohio State great Kelsey Mitchell.
And now, at long last, Caitlin Clark's record-breaking career has reached its greatest summit: the NCAA career scoring record.
Clark set the record at 7:48 of the first quarter, scoring off a 3-pointer from the Mediacom logo. Of course, it just had to be a logo 3 that was the record-setting basket, given Clark's incredible proficiency at that particular shot.
It's also appropriate that Clark set the record against Michigan because it was against the Wolverines in 2022 that Clark's ability as a superhuman scorer hit another level. Clark was already an incredibly prolific scorer, but when she exploded for 46 points against the Wolverines, including 25 points in the fourth quarter, highlighted by a dazzling stretch in which she drained a trio of long three-pointers in a 90-second span, it opened up a new frontier for her ability.
That game officially served as notice of Clark's ability to score so much and so fast was like nothing the women's game had ever seen. As Lisa Bluder said, that game cemented the idea that, for Clark, there's no such thing as a bad shot.
“There’s the point where you realize, ‘She’s different than everyone else and she can actually make these at a pretty alarming rate.’
“There was a shift in my mind,” Bluder noted. “At that point it was like, ‘OK, we’re going to go with this.’”
Clark set a career-high in that game with 46 points, including a dazzling 25 points in the fourth quarter. Incredibly, Clark broke that career record in this game, exploding for 49 points against the Wolverines and setting the new Iowa single-game scoring record in the process as well.
Among the many remarkable scoring milestones in Clark's legendary career:
* Fastest player in Big Ten history to reach 1000 points, doing so in just 40 games (1/2/22)
* Tied for the fastest player (with Elena Della Donne) in NCAA history to reach 2000 points, doing so in 75 games (12/21/22)
* Surpassed former Iowa legend Megan Gustafson for most points in Iowa history (2,804) in only 103 games (11/12/23)
* Became the Big Ten's all-time leading scorer (3,402 points) in 122 games (1/31/24)
The next potential scoring milestone for Clark? Kansas legend Lynette Woodard's major college career scoring total of 3,649 points. The reason Woodard's record isn't the NCAA scoring record is because she scored her points in a pre-NCAA era of women's basketball. The NCAA didn't choose to officially sponsor women's basketball as a sport until 1982. Prior to that, the sport was governed by the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW). Woodard's career fell in the AIAW era of the sport.
With 3,528 points, Clark is just 122 points away from toppling Woodard's career scoring mark as well. If Clark maintains her season average of 32.2 points per game, she's likely to eclipse Woodard's record in Iowa's road game at Minnesota on 2/28. If not there, the record could fall against Ohio State in Iowa's regular season finale on 3/3.
And beyond Woodard? Clark would be the undisputed queen of the career scoring marks for women's college basketball. The all-time NCAA scoring record for men's or women's basketball is held by "Pistol" Pete Maravich, the legendary scorer who amassed 3,667 points in his career at LSU. Caveats would apply if Clark is able to break Maravich's record since he did it in just 83 games and without the benefit of the three-point shot, but still -- the number is the number.
But there are figures beyond Maravich in the career scoring ranks as well -- most notably Pearl Moore. Moore scored an astonishing 4,061 points from 1975 to 1979 in her career at Francis Marion, a small college in Florence, South Carolina. Francis Marion now competes at the NCAA Division II level.
Even with another deep NCAA Tournament run, Clark would likely be hard-pressed to catch Moore. At her current season average of 32.2 ppg, Clark would need almost 17 games to catch Moore, but even with repeat trips to the Big Ten and NCAA Tournament championship games, Iowa would only play an additional 13 games this season.
For now, though, one thing is indisputable: Caitlin Clark stands alone atop the NCAA's career scoring list.