Women’s basketball is officially flush with elite distributors as the sport returns five of the six leading assisters from a season ago and a notable glut of heady fifth-year talent.
So with opening day officially just three weeks away, let’s begin NCAA.com’s season preview with a look at the 10 best passers from around the country:
1. Caitlin Clark, Iowa (8.6 assists/game last season)
College basketball’s sweet-stroking phenom tops yet another list (gasp), but looking past her 3-pointers from Omaha reveals almost unquestionably the sport’s best passer. Clark ran away with the DI assist title in 2023, but her adjusted numbers are even more impressive — the Hawkeye PG beat second-place Nika Mühl by almost 1.5 with 10 assists per 40 minutes.
And while Clark does have the ball in her hands a disproportionate amount of the time — her 36.4 percent usage rate ranks eight in college basketball — she’s also a more scoring-focused guard than any player on this list; heck, than any player in the country.
Clark works to find her teammates in a variety of ways but is particularly dazzling in pick-and-roll situations, firing one-handed missiles off the dribble into the palms of rolling Iowa bigs. The Naismith Player of the Year also excels in post entries and…
