EVANSTON, Ill. — Michael Jordan had a saying about scoring.
Thirty-two points a game was just eight a quarter. And when you break it down like that, it doesn’t seem too difficult. Until normal players actually try to do it. This isn’t a video game, after all. But like Michael Jordan, Iowa superstar Caitlin Clark, who just happened to come into Wednesday’s game averaging 32 a game, isn’t normal. Not when it comes to scoring. Not when it comes to drawing a crowd.
In front of a packed house, Clark scored a breezy 35 points in a ho-hum 110-74 win over Northwestern on Wednesday night. She scored 10 in the first quarter, eight in the second, nine in the third and eight in the fourth.
It wasn’t her best night. She didn’t shoot from long range particularly well — she missed 9 of 12 3-pointers — but she got to the basket when she wanted, and she went 10 of 10 from the free-throw line. And she added 10 assists and 6 rebounds.
It’s just the simple arithmetic of being Caitlin Clark. Every quarter and every game of her historic career has added up to her being on the doorstep of becoming the greatest scorer in women’s NCAA basketball history.
Clark passed Missouri State’s Jackie Stiles for third place on the career scoring list in the first quarter, and after two layups…
