IOWA CITY, Iowa — After Caitlin Clark broke the Division I scoring record last month in an emphatic win over Michigan, she joyfully threw the game ball into the stands when the final buzzer sounded. And then … she never saw it again.
So on Monday night, after her final home game in Carver-Hawkeye Arena after a career’s worth of career nights, she tossed the game ball to her parents with a firm message: “Steal it and run,” Clark joked. “That’s usually what I tell them and then the NCAA usually tries to run them down and tell them they can’t have it. But, they can have it. I said so.”
The irony, of course, is that of all the basketballs Clark could snag from the NCAA, this is one that wasn’t exactly her best friend during the game.
Sure, the usually dazzling Clark still finished with an impressive stat line in the Hawkeyes’ 64-54 second-round win over West Virginia: 32 points, 8 rebounds. She also set the NCAA single-season scoring record. But beneath those numbers were a few other pesky stats.
Clark and the team shot just 36 percent on the evening. Iowa’s offense — which typically features fluid ball movement and motion — stalled out. The Hawkeyes, who lead the nation with a blistering 92 points per game, scored just 64 points and 25 of those points…
