Wrapping Up 2023 – Despite Losing the NCAA Title, Why Caitlin Clark Was the Best Player of This Year

Arguably the country’s best college basketball player on either the men’s or women’s side, Caitlin Clark is a mean machine in terms of scoring, rebounding, and assists. She has broken numerous records and set many others, simply by her performance. This season too she has been averaging 30.5 points gaining 1st rank, 7.5 rebounds, and 7.4 assists holding 7th rank. Also, she has been shooting with a field goal percentage of 48.7%.

Notably, these stats reflect her performance in just 13 games that she has played so far. She may have lost the title last season, however, she remains to be the best.

Caitlin Clark’s ever winning highlights

On a year-ending note, it seems only fair to say that Caitlin Clark had a sensational 2023. During her NCAA national championship run, she lost only 3 games to Kansas State, NC State, and UConn. Although, these were 3 big losses faced by Clark, however, she kept going and kept on breaking different records hitting on different milestones in various aspects of the sport.

She became the only player to make back-to-back 40-point game records in the history of the NCAA women’s tournament. In the Elite Eight matchup against Louisville, Clark scored 41 points, 12 assists, and 10 rebounds,  also contributing to the 11th triple-double of her career.

She was entering her second 40-point game against South Carolina in the Final Four. She scored 41 points, 6 rebounds, 8 assists, and 1 steal in just 39 minutes. Although, the Hawkeyes lost the game with a 77-73 upset, however, Clark’s performance played a crucial role in keeping the margin so close to the opponent team.

Following that, in a game against Evansville, the moment she scored her 16th point Clark became the 6th Division I player to pull off 1000 points in a single season. By breaking the 1000-point mark, she became the first player to have accomplished that in just 40 games in the history of Big 10. Interestingly, with this milestone, she also broke Kelsey Mitchell’s record of 1000 points when she scored 41 points in a game against Ohio State.

In Iowa’s matchup against Northern Iowa, Clark surpassed the Iowa legend Megan Gsutafson’s record and became the all-time leading scorer in the University’s women’s basketball history. The matchup provided Clark the turning point to have scored 2813 career points, breaking Gustafson’s record of 2804 points that she set in 2019.

Gustafson even shared a personalized message for Clark sighting this achievement saying, “Congrats on breaking my record, you know you could’ve given that ode to me and let me hold on to it for a little bit longer.” Furthermore, Clark moved up in the scoring ladder when she made a unique record of having to score 3000 points, with 750 rebounds and 750+ assists.

Moreover, she scored 32 3-point shots during the 2023 NCAA Tournament in the semifinal game against South Carolina, surpassing the previous record set by Katy Steding who made 6 3-point shots in 1990, tying this score with Virginia Tech’s Georgia Moore.

Read More: Passing The Torch, Caitlin Clark’s “Unbelievable” Record Receives Iowa Legend’s Stamp of Approval

Now, let’s look into the reasons why she couldn’t win last season’s NCAA title.

Factors that slipped the NCAA title off of Iowa’s hands

In last season’s NCCA championship tournament, Iowa was on a consistent run, growing closer to winning the title, however, in front of LSU’s energetic and strong performance, Iowa couldn’t stand the game through. The Tigers scored 102 points in unison and secured their first-ever national championship title.

Moreover, Clark had to go through a lot of foul trouble that eventually affected her gameplay and in turn her team’s overall strategy to win. In addition, she did get a lot of competition from Angel Reese, who is considered among the ones who never back out.

After this loss, when she went back to attend Iowa’s homecoming celebration, Caitlin expressed her thoughts when asked about the painful memory of losing the title to the LSU Tigers and the lessons she learned from it.

She said, “Yeah, I think the biggest thing for myself learning is how hard it is to get there. There’s what, 360 division one basketball teams? It is really hard to get there. It’s really hard. It’s gonna be really hard to get back there.”

Reflecting on her learnings of the situation, she said, “So I think the biggest thing that I learned for myself is to enjoy every single moment. But when you’re in the locker room, at that end of the game you know, you’re crying, you’re upset. But I think the thing you realize is you’re not upset…You’re upset that you lost. But you’re most upset that your season’s over and the girls that you did it with, you don’t get to go back and practice with them the next day. And I think that just speaks to how close our team was and how much fun we had together.”

And she continued saying, “You know the year before we lost in the round of 32 to Creighton, you know, that’s a failure in itself. But I think if we didn’t have the fire inside of us to, you know, be motivated the next year we knew it was our last year of having all five starters together. You know, I think that’s what really drove us, you know to get to the final four, reach the national championship and really just believe in ourselves.”

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Remarkably, she is one of the best players that college basketball has ever seen. No matter how hard they fall, what matters is how bravely they get back up and fight on. That’s what Caitlin’s performance in 2023 resonates with.