DALLAS − Caitlin Clark took the inbounds pass and, for one final time, sped around the helpless South Carolina defense. As the clock struck zero, the sensational 21-year-old from West Des Moines who has captivated a nation hoisted the basketball into the air to initiate a historic celebration.
In what was undoubtedly the biggest game in Iowa basketball history, men or women, Clark and the Hawkeyes rose to the moment. And she made sure to race around the floor at American Airlines Center to say thank you to the fans who made the trip to witness the unthinkable: The Iowa Hawkeyes are headed to Sunday's national title game.
They face LSU at 2:30 p.m. on ABC.
"Shoutout to all the Hawks fans that have traveled down to Dallas. They were so amazing and so loud and so fun," Clark said. "I don't think we'd be at this point in the season if it wasn't for them. I truly mean that. I know so many tuned in."
Some folks nationally were calling Friday’s Iowa-South Carolina showdown in the Women’s Final Four a battle of David vs. Goliath.
So, the question then became: How to take down the giant in the most important 40 minutes of your basketball lives?
For the Hawkeyes, defeating a juggernaut started with belief … and the game plan that players received early in the week.
The Hawkeye coaching staff knew that their best path to dispatching the prohibitive NCAA Tournament favorite and its 42-game winning streak needed to be extreme.
On defense, pack the paint. Don’t let the South Carolina giants get the ball. And dare them to shoot.
On offense, don't fear the Gameco*cks' massive front line, which included 6-foot-5 Aliyah Boston and 6-7 Kamilla Cardoso. In fact, attack it with angles and craftiness.
Oh, and here’s the last and most necessary piece of the game plan: Have Caitlin Clark on your side.
Behind their junior superstar and a coaching gem from Lisa Bluder and her staff, the Hawkeyes delivered a 77-73 triumph Friday night in a game that lived up to every bit of the national hype.
"I think just tonight showed how fun women's basketball is," said Clark, who wowed the world with 41 points, eight assists and six rebounds with all eyes and pressure on her shoulders. "Two really great teams that went at it. I'm sure so many people wish this was a series of seven games. That would be really, really fun."
A seven-game series like the NBA? Iowa doesn't have to worry about that in this postseason.
This was one and done.
And the giant is done.
“We're clearly not as tall as them. We're clearly not as athletic as them,” Clark said. “But I think we're a very, very skilled basketball team that loves one another, and that's going to get you really, really far.”
All the way to the NCAA title game, just the second in Iowa basketball history. (The men got there in 1956 and lost.)
And Bluder outcoached Dawn Staley, the Naismith Coach of the Year, by a country mile.
Staley and the Gameco*cks had no answer for Clark … and hardly any for Monika Czinano.
Clark, by her standards, had a poor shooting night from 3-point range at 5-for-17. Sure, the lengthy Gameco*cks defenders were able to bother her for 94 feet. Clark showed up to interviews with a bloody left arm.
But where Clark constantly burned South Carolina was on her drives to the hoop. She finished 10-for-14 on 2-pointers, and the Gameco*cks failed to send a second defender to stop her. Some of her paint moves were dazzling; we rarely get to see her go to the basket one-on-one in Big Ten play, but we saw it Friday.
Clark scored 16 of her 41 points – second-most in Final Four history – in the decisive fourth quarter, including Iowa’s final 13. She wasn’t going to be denied.
“She leans into the moments,” associate head coach Jan Jensen said. “She wants the moments.”
The South Carolina scouting report was devised by Jenni Fitzgerald, the third piece of the Bluder-Jensen coaching run together for the last 31 years. Fitzgerald is now a special assistant to the head coach, but she’s considered the team’s scouting guru. The staff collaborated, of course, on the game plan and presented it to the team. They knew first and foremost they weren't going to allow Boston to beat them.
“I loved our game plan. We really packed the paint, made them earn it around the rim,” Clark said. “Obviously they got some (offensive) boards, but at the same time, nobody said we were going to outrebound them. That would have been a lie.
“I thought all we did was just come back down every single time and buy into our defense. And Coach Bluder switched it up quite a bit, too. I thought that gave them problems."
But bottom line, they were going to make South Carolina guards make wide open shots. Like, really wide-open shots. Clark would sag from her point-guard spot into the free-throw lane, even waving at them as if to say, “We know you won't make it.” And it worked. South Carolina, a poor shooting team from 3 (31% for the season), hit 4-for-20 from long range, with only Raven Johnson (3-for-6) finding any kind of hot hand.
There was a psychology to that, Iowa’s Kate Martin said. It was something she had talked about with a team sports psychologist earlier in the day.
“It’s definitely harder to shoot when you’re that wide open. I’d rather have some slight defense,” said Martin, who had seven points and seven rebounds. “There’s actually statistics out there (that show that), because you’re just thinking when you’re that wide open.”
Another masterful part of the Iowa game plan was taking advantage of Staley’s stubbornness.
As Jensen put it: She knew – they knew – South Carolina wouldn’t double-team Czinano like almost every Iowa opponent has done this year. (Some teams have even tripled her.)
Iowa coaches were right.
Despite foul trouble, Czinano knifed into the paint for six huge baskets and drew three fouls to drain all six free-throw attempts.
“They weren’t going to double her,” Jensen said. “And I like my chances with Monika. That is one of the coolest stories out there.”
The final scorecard between two players who wound up in foul trouble:
Boston – eight points, 2-for-9 shooting, 10 rebounds, 25½ minutes.
Czinano – 18 points, 6-for-8 shooting, three rebounds, 27 minutes.
Not many people would have predicted Czinano to outplay Boston before this game.
“If we could have allowed Czinano to have a little less opportunities, it could have flipped the other way,” Staley said. “She was the one that put them over the top with her contributions, because we had everybody else in check.”
Well, except for Clark.
Clark’s ability to deliver magical Patrick Mahomes-like passes got Czinano, who was held to just two shot attempts by Louisville in the Elite Eight, rolling.
“I think the post game is all about angles and where you deliver it,” said Jensen, Iowa's renowned post coach who helped center Megan Gustafson become national player of the year in 2019. “She only got blocked once. … But did she get blocked after that? No, she did not. Because we gave her some plays where the angle was there."
Czinano will now get to play in the maximum number of games in her fifth-year senior year at Iowa. She's playing in the last game of the season Sunday.
"All the credit goes to my teammates," Czinano said. "They find me in positions that I am the most effective, and they do it game in and game out.”
Noticing where Iowa had success there, Bluder kept ordering ball-screen offense.
“It was really just a lot of screening action and floor balance,” Bluder said. “I think we do a really good job of balancing the floor so that somebody really can't help as much on you.”
Mostly, Iowa just let Caitlin be Caitlin.
And what more can be written about her that hasn’t been already?
With her second straight 41-point outing in the biggest game of her life, greatness has become expected. Jensen referenced Michael Jordan in the postgame in relation to Clark’s internal competitiveness and basketball mind being on another level.
She had this. Iowa had this.
"She just elevates everyone around you," said McKenna Warnock, whose only thought after getting the biggest offensive rebound of the game (off Clark's missed 3 in the final minute) was to get it back to Clark so she could shoot free throws. "Even I find myself just standing in awe watching her every single day."
So now, one more. Bluder will be matched against LSU’s Kim Mulkey, the coach who led Baylor to an Elite Eight trouncing vs. Iowa in 2019 and on Friday guided the Tigers to an overpowering fourth quarter against Virginia Tech.
What happens next?
We’ll see. Coaches were cranking on the LSU scouting report early Saturday morning.
But Bluder deserved to relish this one. This was a coaching masterpiece, and Iowa owned the defending national champs.
“Any time you are beating the No. 1 team in the country who hasn't lost all year long and they're being coached by the Olympic coach,” Bluder said, “yeah, it's a pretty good day. A pretty good day.”
Hawkeyes columnist Chad Leistikow has covered sports for 28years with The Des Moines Register, USA TODAY and Iowa City Press-Citizen. Follow @ChadLeistikow on Twitter.
