CLEVELAND — Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and UConn’s Paige Bueckers each confused that Friday’s nationwide semifinal showdown between the Hawkeyes and the Huskies (9 p.m. ET, ESPN) was all about their groups, not them.
UConn’s Geno Auriemma, who’s teaching within the ladies’s Closing 4 for the twenty third time, sees the person famous person matchup in a extra historic lens. He remembers the 1979 males’s nationwide championship sport between Magic Johnson (Michigan State) and Larry Fowl (Indiana State) as serving to elevate not simply March Insanity however the NBA.
“[With] Magic and Fowl, TV hastily began paying extra consideration,” Auriemma mentioned throughout Thursday’s classes with media at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse. “These two specific gamers got here on, and it simply lit every little thing up, and it simply took off from there.
“So [the game] wants some stars. It wants those who have the best persona, the best sport. And we now have that now.”
That is true with two guards who’re must-watch standouts. Clark leads the nation in scoring (32.0 PPG) and assists (9.0 APG); she has scored extra factors (3,900) in her Iowa profession than any males’s or ladies’s participant in Division I historical past. She’s coming off a 41-point, 12-assist efficiency in a win over LSU in an Elite Eight sport on Monday that drew a report tv viewers of greater than 12 million.
Bueckers was the nationwide participant of the 12 months as a freshman in 2021 and has made it to the Closing 4 every of the three seasons she has been wholesome sufficient to play. Bueckers missed 2022-23 with a knee damage, and UConn missed the Closing 4 for the primary time since 2007. Bueckers had 28 factors and 10 rebounds in UConn’s regional remaining victory over USC; she is averaging 22.0 factors and three.9 assists.
Clark mentioned Thursday that she reached out to Bueckers earlier than this season to want her luck on returning after the damage. The 2 have recognized one another since they had been children on the AAU circuit, with Clark rising up in Iowa and Bueckers in Minnesota. They’ve additionally performed along with USA Basketball junior groups.
“She is aware of methods to play, an incredible IQ,” Bueckers mentioned of Clark. “I believe the most important factor about her is she competes and she or he’s only a winner.”
Bueckers was the No. 1-rated recruit within the class of 2020, whereas Clark was No. 4 behind Angel Reese and Cameron Brink.
Clark, Reese and Brink may have come again for a fifth 12 months subsequent season due to the COVID-19 waiver from 2020-21, their freshman 12 months. As a substitute, all have declared for the WNBA draft, which is April 15.
Bueckers may have gone to the draft, too, however she introduced in February that she was returning to UConn for the 2024-25 season.
Although this weekend is not going to be the faculty conclusion for Bueckers, it will likely be for Clark. Within the 2021 NCAA event, which was held in a “bubble” in San Antonio, UConn defeated Iowa 92-72 within the Candy 16. Clark had 21 factors and 5 assists in that sport, whereas Bueckers practically had a triple-double with 18 factors, 9 rebounds, 8 assists. UConn went on to lose to Arizona within the nationwide semifinals.
The subsequent season, Iowa was upset by Creighton within the second spherical, whereas UConn went to the NCAA remaining and misplaced to South Carolina. Bueckers injured a knee in summer season 2023 and needed to sit out the 2023-24 season. Clark, in the meantime, led Iowa to this system’s second Closing 4; its first was in 1993.
Clark mentioned it was cool to see how her and Bueckers’ careers have developed, however added: “[Friday’s game is] not Paige versus Caitlin. It takes the complete workforce to win a basketball sport. Each of us are going to do every little thing we will.
“The best factor about Paige is how resilient she is. She’s been type of dealt a troublesome hand [with injuries] and solely has optimistic issues to say about her teammates. And the way in which she carries herself on and off the courtroom and the way in which she works laborious, none of that has modified. I’ve recognized her since she was in center college; she’s all the time labored that very same method, all the time had that fireplace and been a pacesetter.”
Auriemma, who has coached a number of All-Individuals and Corridor of Famers, acknowledges the Clark-Bueckers matchup as resonating in a method that may assist the complete sport. He mentioned the 2 gamers have helped develop an viewers past simply followers following their very own groups.
“There wasn’t like a nationwide consciousness of, ‘Hey, we have to watch this.’ … It is gone past that now, due to what a few of these youngsters have finished,” Auriemma mentioned of the distinction in followers’ viewing habits. “They’ve created a fan base of ladies’s basketball that they’re going to watch an incredible ladies’s sport, no matter whether or not they have a rooting curiosity or not within the sport.”
“There have been a number of nice NBA gamers earlier than Magic and Larry Fowl, so why did not it occur? Individuals did not make it occur. So these two guys, as a result of they did it in school and folks noticed them play lots, they needed to comply with them after they left. [Past great women’s players], they did not have the next. They did not have the hysteria that these youngsters have.”