CLEVELAND — Caitlin Clark. Paige Bueckers. Two transformative players in college basketball on one court, with a trip to the national championship on the line, is a sportswriter's dream — if, perhaps, not a coach's.
"I do not want this to be a game that's promoted as Caitlin vs. Paige," Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder said Thursday at a news conference. "And I know it already has been. But I don't want that. I want it to be Iowa versus UConn and let these two women do what they do best."
Iowa assistant head coach Jan Jensen was even more direct in her pushback. "This isn't Paige vs. Caitlin," she said. "These two women have done amazing things for the sport, and they are amazing. I hope they both shine. But if that's what it was, then we should all sit down and play one-on-one. No one really wants to see that. But we understand that's what sells tickets and gets people hyper."
On one hand, Bluder and Jensen are indisputably right. Clark and Bueckers are merely two of 10 players that will be on the court, and there's no sense in diminishing the other eight players on the court and their ability to play integral roles in winning big games. Even after all its injuries, UConn's got no shortage of high-level talent, and Hawkeye fans know full well how necessary the role players are to the team's second-straight Final Four berth after a 30-year absence.
On the other hand... good luck with that.
Because while Friday night's Final Four game (8:30 PM CT, ESPN) will have innumerably more dimensions and details that will affect the game, as much if not more than what Clark and Bueckers add to it, those two are the stars, and the attention — and money — follows the stars.
Friday's game will be far from the first chapter in the two star guards' shared basketball history, but it just might be the biggest.
Some stars come out of nowhere. Not these two.
"She's somebody that I've known since middle school, both growing up in the Midwest," Clark said Thursday. "I'm sure I played her in middle school: maybe seventh, eighth grade. We both played for Nike programs for quite a while. [...] I always ended up playing up [an age division] when I got into high school and she usually played around her age group, so we didn't honestly match up a ton against each other."
As high school freshmen, both Bueckers and Clark were on the 2017 Team USA U16 squad, winning the first of Clark's three gold medals in FIBA World Cups.
Bueckers and Clark were both scintillating talents as prep prospects in the 2020 class; Bueckers was a consensus #1 recruit, and deservedly so with her expansive skill set and ability to both attack off the dribble and hit her jumper with regularity. With Bueckers hailing from Hopkins, Minnesota — a suburb of Minneapolis — and Clark a few hours down the road at Dowling Catholic in West Des Moines, Iowa, the urge to pit the two against each other was undeniable.
"People always wanted to set up matchups between Hopkins and Dowling," Clark said. "It's like the only thing people ever emailed my high school coach about."
Bluder wanted to recruit Bueckers, but with the Hawkeyes not yet the national phenomenon they are now and with UConn leading the charge for the jaw-dropping guard, that never materialized.
"She's a Minnesota girl, I went up to her open gyms and such, so I know her," Bluder said. "She doesn't know me but I know her, obviously, and her game."
Clark, to her credit, was hardly far behind, ranking fourth nationally in ESPN's HoopGurlz class ranking in a loaded high school class that has, rather seamlessly, developed into a loaded 2024 WNBA Draft class. Every school wanted Bueckers. Every school wanted Clark, too — except the one that had Bueckers.
"I committed to Paige Bueckers very, very early, and it would have been silly for me to say to Paige, hey, listen, we're going to put you in the same backcourt, and then I'm going to try really hard to recruit Caitlin Clark. I don't do it that way," said Auriemma on Tuesday.
Clark and Bueckers would cross paths once more before donning their college uniforms, reuniting on Team USA on the Under-19 squad in 2019, going undefeated and taking gold in the World Cup in Thailand. Bueckers was named MVP of that tournament, averaging 11.6 points and a tournament-best 5.4 assists per game.
"She's always been able to go up against the best, whether it's internationally, college, or high school," Clark said. "It's been special to win two of my three gold medals with [Bueckers]. I'm just lucky that I was able to be her teammate."
Bueckers reciprocated her fellow star's respect during UConn's press time.
"[Clark's] just a competitor," Bueckers said. "She wants to win. She has just intangibles of the game. She knows how to play, a great IQ. I think the biggest thing about her is she competes and she's just a winner, she wants to win at all costs. So I know going into that, it will be a great match-up."
Clark said that the two have stayed in some level of contact since then. "I reached out to her before the year started, told her good luck and that I was rooting for her and hope she has a tremendous year."
Camaraderie aside, this won't be Clark's first time facing Bueckers on a college court — the two squared off as freshmen in the 2021 NCAA Tournament, when 1-seeded UConn dispatched 5-seed Iowa 92-72 in the Sweet 16. Iowa never led as the talented Huskies cruised to victory.
In the loss, Clark scored 21 points, albeit on 7-for-21 shooting; Bueckers scored "only" 18 points, but added nine rebounds and eight assists in the win. Clark had yet to progress into the stat-stuffing monster she is now, with three boards and five assists.
"Honestly, that game is super blurry, it feels like forever ago," Clark said. "I was looking back and I saw some old footage of that game and we both look really, really young. It's cool to see how our careers have evolved, and a lot of different players on both teams."
"I think it was the Sweet 16 game," Bueckers said. "I remember Christyn [Williams] having a really big game, us just playing a great team game."
Clark got a second shot at Auriemma and UConn in non-conference action last season, though Bueckers was sidelined for the contest. Iowa led into the fourth quarter, but couldn't stop the Huskies down the stretch as UConn prevailed 86-79. Clark's 25 points, seven rebounds and six assists paced the Hawkeyes, but Huskies post Aaliyah Edwards was too much for Monika Czinano and Iowa down the stretch, finishing with 20 points, 13 rebounds and six assists.
Edwards may not be the household name that Clark or Bueckers is, but she'll still be starting at the 5 for the Huskies Friday — and projects as a top-5 pick in the WNBA Draft as well.
One underappreciated aspect of Clark's career has been her ability to avoid injuries. Clark has not missed a single game in her collegiate career, despite seeing teams' most physical defenders, venturing into the paint with reckless abandon and just, well, playing over 4,700 minutes in her college career. Clark currently ranks 57th in career minutes played since 1987-88, and she needs just 16 minutes on the court to crack the top 50.
Bueckers has not been so fortunate.
After sweeping the National Player of the Year awards as a freshman, UConn's star guard broke her leg and tore her meniscus in a December 2021 game against Notre Dame as a sophomore, returning to play at less than 100% as the Huskies advanced to the 2022 national championship, then missed the entirety of the following season with a torn ACL suffered during a pickup game in August of 2022.
All told, Bueckers' injuries limited her on-court presence to 17 games through the 2022 and 2023 seasons, while Clark ascended into the vacuum left in basketball's stratosphere.
"I think the coolest thing about Paige is how resilient she is," Clark said. "Obviously she's been kind of dealt a tough hand and only has positive things to say about her teammates. And the way she carries herself on and off the court and the way she works hard, none of that has changed. Since I've known her since she was in middle school she's always worked that same way, always had that fire and been a leader."
Either player's ability to be great isn't affected by the other, of course. This town is big enough for the two of 'em, as this season has proven; Bueckers has played all 38 games, averaging 23 points, four rebounds and five assists per game as the Huskies have returned to their perennial championship-caliber form, while Clark has ascended to levels of fame and greatness that are genuinely hard to fathom at times. They're only pitted against each other as players here because, well, their teams have earned the right to be pitted against each other in a Final Four.
Bueckers announced during Senior Day that she would return for one more year in Storrs, setting herself up for a dominant senior season. On Thursday, she expressed concern that
"Media coverage is important for the game, I think it grows the game," Bueckers said. "I know freshman year I was like the 'media darling.' Everybody was focused on me and what I did at UConn my freshman year. But I think it's more important for the game to share the spotlight to grow the game and show all the stars of college basketball and not just focus on one particular player, whether it be me, Caitlin, JuJu, Angel. There's so many names in college basketball now that are huge, that are stars that deserve credit."
So if there is good news for Bueckers, Clark and the Iowa coaching staff, it's that their wishes for their superstar status to be shared with the rest of the sport are already coming true. Ratings and attendance at women's college basketball are rising even when Clark or Bueckers aren't involved, and the sold-out arenas that followed Clark at Iowa's road games this season meant thousands of fans have witnessed, in person, how entertaining women's basketball can be. Once you're entertained, you're hooked, and the entertainment isn't leaving women's ball any time soon.
USC freshman JuJu Watkins is already ascendant as the Next Big Thing, and Stanford's Kiki Iriafen — a 6'3" wing with legit dunking hops — crushed Iowa State's dreams with a 41-point, 16-rebound performance in the second round of this year's tourney. Iowa fans can even look ahead to 2025 with the impending arrival of top-15 prospect Addie Deal as the next player to electrify Carver-Hawkeye Arena; she's even got her own NIL deal with the inimitable Raygun Shirts.
The NIL part is critically important to the growth of women's college basketball. With the WNBA's restrictions on players entering the Draft before the year of their 22nd birthday*, prospects can establish themselves as mainstream stars at the collegiate level, with their increasingly bought-in college fanbases and these licensing opportunities to maximize exposure.
*There's an alternate history where Clark was born a month prior on December 22, and had the WNBA on the table going into last offseason, without the bevy of season and career awards she amassed in 2023-24. Just in case any Iowa fans are still feeling shortchanged by Clark's decision to forgo her extra COVID year and declare for the '24 Draft.
So yes, Clark and Bueckers are the face of college basketball this year. They're commanding outsized attention, and they're both great players who make viewers want to keep tuning in. Both started as great prospects, then took much different routes to get to the Final Four. They're both playing the best basketball of their lives, they've led their teams to the brink of the National Championship game, and they'll almost certainly put on a show Friday night.
Like their careers, Bueckers and Clark's matchup Friday will be great for the sport. It'll be compelling. It'll be fun. It'll get a lot of attention, and regardless of who comes out victorious, it'll be another part of the rich lore of one of the sport's best "rivalries" running.
(Sorry, Coach Bluder.)
