As last Sunday’s NCAA Elite Eight game between the Iowa and Louisville women’s basketball teams unfolded, the court at Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena seemed to become a Broadway stage with an invisible spotlight tracking one player: the Hawkeyes’ Caitlin Clark.
When the curtain fell, Clark not only finished with a jaw-dropping 41 points in Iowa’s 97-83 win. She added 12 assists and 10 rebounds to produce the first official 40-point triple-double in an NCAA tournament game. (Assists didn’t become an official stat until 1984.)