The most exciting player in college basketball did it again.
Caitlin Clark dropped a cool 44 points with eight rebounds and six assists, leading No. 3 Iowa past No. 8 Virginia Tech in a nationally televised showdown of 2023 Final Four teams. The Hawkeyes also got 12 points from Hannah Stuelke in 17 minutes of action, and 10 more from forward Kate Martin.
Both teams battled through a sluggish first half, with Iowa in particular struggling from deep. Even with open, obvious looks on most attempts, Iowa was just 1-for-15 from behind the arc in the first half. The Hawkeyes still took a 33-32 lead to the break, but the decidedly pro-Hokie crowd was ready to cheer Tech to the (mild) upset.
That wouldn't be happening with Clark, who shook off her cold start and rang in 26 points after halftime, including 4-for-9 from behind the arc. Clark also did her part in the victory by drawing a ludicrous 16 fouls on Virginia Tech.
That damage had a material impact on the Hokies' offense, too; sharp-shooting Carleigh Wenzel (11 points, 4-4 shooting, 2-2 for three) fouled out in just 17 minutes of action, and starting guard Cayla King was also limited to 18 minutes with foul trouble of her own.
The key stretch of the game came early in the fourth quarter, after Virginia Tech had cut Iowa's lead to two points on a King three-pointer. Gabbie Marshall had lost the ball on a turnover, but Molly Davis stole it back, setting off a fast break and layup by Kate Martin on one of Clark's six assists.
Martin's layup sparked a 12-2 Hawkeye run, capped by — wouldn't you know it — a Martin layup, this one with an and-one to boot. Just like that, Iowa's lead had ballooned to 74-62 with 4:05 left to play. It wasn't quite chips-and-salsa time from there; star guard Georgia Amoore (31 points) still had three more three-pointers yet to make, and the Hokies got the game as close as 79-76 on Amoore's last make of the game.
That was with five seconds to play, though, and Clark's last point of the game iced it.
Amoore was up for the challenge, showing off a, well, Clark-like stepback three-pointer to devastating effect. Amoore hit 7-of-14 from deep, and was the only one keeping the Hokies close in an otherwise miserable first half for both teams' supporting casts.
In particular, Hokies center Elizabeth Kitley would probably like to have the first three quarters back. The ultra-talented 6'6" center struggled to get her jumper to fall early, at just 2-for-8 from the field before the fourth quarter, and she caught an inadvertent elbow from King in the third quarter and briefly left the game.
Kitley, to her credit, hit five of her eight attempts in the fourth, finishing with 16 points and 16 rebounds, plus three assists and three more blocks. Her footwork confounded Stuelke and Sharon Goodman, who came off the bench in favor of Davis in the starting lineup Thursday.
Stuelke's foul trouble highlighted a potential flaw with the small-ball lineup as a starting five, though; she's Iowa's primary scoring threat on the interior at this point, and it took a gigantic second half from Clark for Iowa to withstand Stuelke's absence down the stretch. There are many, many more challenging bigs waiting in the Big Ten, and there isn't much of a Plan B for opponents dealing with Stuelke outside of fouling her out. How Bluder uses Stuelke's assignments against skilled bigs like Kitley (or Indiana's Mackenzie Holmes) will merit monitoring.
One more issue in the middle: Addison O'Grady, or the lack thereof. O'Grady appeared to be a healthy scratch, with Goodman logging 23 minutes off the bench. Goodman struggled often on both sides of the ball (and got a couple raw deals on calls, too), but had a pair of layups in Iowa's decisive fourth-quarter run. Clark assisted the first, which pushed Iowa's lead to six, and after Kitley had answered with a layup of her own, Goodman collected an offensive rebound and put it back in, and the run was back on.
Still, O'Grady not seeing the court at all was even stranger than her unexpected demotion to the bench for Goodman in the season opener against FDU. O'Grady played sparingly last season but got significant minutes off the bench in the Final Four, and was widely expected to start after Iowa didn't pick up another big to replace Monika Czinano from the transfer portal.
Goodman's limited mobility hampered her often Thursday night, and if Stuelke's foul trouble persists against skilled bigs, there's no way around Iowa's need for consistent production from O'Grady in that equation.
Not to be forgotten, Marshall and Kylie Feuerbach played remarkable defense on the night, alongside 14 rebounds off the bench from Sydney Affolter. The small-ball trio disrupted the inside-out Hokie attack just enough to let the Hawkeye offense wake up and take control of the game. Feuerbach also dropped her defender on a third-quarter three-pointer:
But the night belonged to Clark, as it had to have, as the spotlight demands. As she demands as well.
Clark had the game on a string for all 40 minutes she spent on the court. Even when her shot wasn't falling from deep (and neither was anybody else's), it was a parade of dribble drives for fouls and layups. It was generating open looks (whether the shots went down or not). It was rebounding, against a team just as physical as the Hawkeyes.
And when Clark's deep shot got unstuck in the second half, the game lurched in Iowa's favor. Again, as it had to have. The shotmaking that Clark and Amoore brought out of each other in the second half was every bit the reward viewers could have asked for, and a perfect showcase for how must-see Clark's games have become.
The Hawkeyes now have a late flight back to Iowa City, practice at 10 am on Friday morning and preparation for a trip to a feisty Northern Iowa squad at the McLeod Center in Cedar Falls. It's a quick turnaround, and for that Bluder is thankful it's happening in early November.
But on that flight home, the Hawkeyes can celebrate a well-earned victory against a team they just might see again in late March or early April. And they can approach preparation for UNI knowing that a win means, in all likelihood, first-place votes in next week's AP poll.
Again, it's early November.
Iowa's already serving notice to the rest of college basketball that it's ready for any takers once again, though, and teams like that have a habit of ending up atop the polls sooner or later.
