Caitlin Clark Wins Wooden Award, Sweeps Player of the Year Honors Again
The Iowa playing career of Caitlin Clark officially wrapped up on Sunday, but she's not quite done receiving awards for her superlative-defying play this season.
Last week, Clark received the AP Player of the Year Award and the Wade Trophy, as well as the Naismith National Player of the Year award. Prior to that, she had already received the ESPN Player of the Year award, The Athletic Player of the Year award, and The Sporting News Player of the Year award this season.
On Tuesday, Clark was named the winner of this year's Wooden Award for the Women's Player of the Year as well.
The Wooden Award gives Clark a clean sweep of the major player of the year awards, a feat she also accomplished last season.
Clark becomes the seventh women's basketball player to win two Wooden Awards and the sixth to repeat as Wooden Award winner, the first since Oregon's Sabrina Ionescu did so in 2019 and 2020. She is the only Big Ten player to ever win the award, which has been awarded to the top women's basketball player annually since 2004.
Clark, a senior from West Des Moines, Iowa, was the most dominant player in women's college basketball in recent seasons by a wide margin; this year she led the nation in scoring per game (31.6), assists per game (8.9), field goals made (403), three-pointers made per game (5.2), total three-pointers made (201), and triple doubles (6).
She became the first Division I player to score 1,000 points in consecutive seasons, as well as the first to lead the country in scoring and assists for two consecutive season. Clark set the NCAA single-season scoring record with 1,234 points this year and finished with an NCAA-record 3,951 points for her remarkable career.
Those records were just two of several that Clark demolished this season, including the career scoring records for Iowa, the Big Ten, NCAA women's basketball, pre-NCAA women's basketball, and NCAA Division I basketball as a whole (men's and women's). Her dominance was an essential part of Iowa making it to back-to-back national championship games.
In 2023-24, Clark went from superstar player to bona fide cultural phenomenon, becoming one of the most recognizable -- and most popular -- basketball players on the planet. She was the face of national advertising campaigns for Nike, Buick, State Farm, Gatorade, and more enormous brands and dominated discussion on and off the court for the past several months.
Her ability as a box office draw was unmatched, both in terms of ticket sales and TV ratings. Clark helped Iowa sell out its full slate of home games at Carver-Hawkeye Arena almost instantly last summer and break attendance records (usually via sellout crowds) at every Hawkeye road game as well.
On TV, Clark and Iowa set viewership records on seven different networks over the course of the season, often breaking their own past records in doing so. The apex of her power as a TV draw came in the just-concluded NCAA Tournament, where she helped draw record ratings in each round, culminating in a record 18.7 million viewers tuning in to watch Clark and Iowa take on South Carolina for the national championship.
The Caitlin Clark Show is over at Iowa, though her basketball journey will continue. Clark is widely expected to be the #1 overall pick in this year's WNBA Draft, which is set take place at 6:30 PM CT on Monday, April 15. ESPN will televise the draft.