Caitlin Clark and Iowa advance to women’s Final Four after beating 2023 champion LSU

CNN
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The sequel didn’t have the very same forged as the unique. Faculty basketball doesn’t work that manner.

However the two outstanding stars from the NCAA ladies’s basketball event a 12 months in the past – Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and LSU’s Angel Reese – remained entrance and middle within the sport. Monday night time, they each lived as much as the hype, however it’s the sharp-shooting Clark who will get to play on.

Clark had 41 factors – together with going 9-of-20 from three-point vary – to go along with 12 assists and 7 rebounds, and No. 1 Iowa topped No. 3 LSU 94-87, a rematch of final 12 months’s NCAA title recreation, to advance to the Ultimate 4 for the second consecutive season.

“Job’s not completed,” Clark stated on the courtroom to ESPN after the win.

Up subsequent for Iowa is a program synonymous with the Ultimate 4 and successful nationwide championships: No. 3 UConn, who held off freshman phenom JuJu Watkins and No. 1 USC 80-73 within the regional remaining in Portland, Oregon.

It will likely be the twenty third Ultimate 4 look – and fifteenth within the final 16 NCAA tournaments – for the 11-time nationwide champion Huskies, all underneath head coach Geno Auriemma. It will likely be the third Ultimate 4 for UConn star Paige Bueckers, who missed final season with a torn ACL.

This is likely to be impossible Ultimate 4 journey of all of them, as UConn, decimated by accidents this season, had a depleted roster.

In the meantime, on the other facet of the ladies’s bracket, undefeated and prime total seed South Carolina will face No. 3 NC State within the Ultimate 4. These two groups clinched their spots with wins on Sunday.

The ladies’s Ultimate 4 is ready to occur Friday at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ohio, and the nationwide championship recreation is scheduled on Sunday.

Clark, who has probably the most profession factors in Division I historical past for men and women, is a generational expertise. The 22-year-old is projected to be the No. 1 total choose within the WNBA draft on April 15.

However earlier than the WNBA, she has one final shot for a nationwide title.

After the sport, the Iowa famous person shared a second within the handshake line with Reese and LSU head coach Kim Mulkey.

“(Clark) simply instructed me, ‘Proceed to be an amazing participant,’ and I instructed her proceed to be an amazing participant, as effectively, and hold elevating the sport and go win it,” Reese stated.

“What did I say to her? I stated, ‘I positive am glad you’re leaving,’” Mulkey stated. “I stated, ‘Lady, you one thing else.’ By no means seen something prefer it.”

Was revenge on Iowa’s thoughts after what occurred final 12 months?

“To be sincere, no,” Clark stated.

Whereas Iowa and LSU had been dealing with one another within the Elite Eight, the competition at MVP Enviornment in Albany, New York, had the vitality and depth of a nationwide championship recreation.

Regardless of rolling her ankle within the second quarter, Reese had her tenth consecutive double-double within the NCAA event, tying the event file, with 17 factors and 20 rebounds earlier than fouling out with 1:45 left. She additionally had 4 assists, three blocks and two steals.

Kate Martin added 21 factors for Iowa, whereas Sydney Affolter had 16. LSU’s Flau’jae Johnson had 23 factors.

The final time Clark and Reese squared off – with Reese famously waving her hand in entrance of her face towards Clark after which pointing to her ring finger as LSU closed in on the nationwide title – it was the most-watched ladies’s school basketball recreation in historical past. The matchup in 2023 was in comparison with when Magic Johnson confronted Larry Hen within the 1979 NCAA males’s title recreation.

However Johnson and Hen didn’t have a Half II (a minimum of not in school) like Clark and Reese did.

Clark retains including to the file books, breaking the NCAA’s all-time file for three-pointers made in a profession throughout Monday’s recreation, surpassing Taylor Robertson of Oklahoma.

Clark additionally broke the NCAA event file for many assists (140) and three-pointers (70) in 15 profession video games.

It’s not recognized if Reese, final 12 months’s Ultimate 4 Most Excellent Participant, will return to LSU or head to the WNBA. Reese, who shall be 22 in Could, is a junior.

“I’ll decide once I’m prepared,” Reese instructed reporters after the sport.

Whereas a rematch between Iowa and LSU was the large talker heading into the NCAA event, the later of Monday night time’s Elite Eight matchups was compelling, too.

USC’s Watkins, simply 18 years previous, is second within the nation to Clark in factors per recreation this season. On Monday in Portland, whereas on her solution to 29 factors and 10 rebounds, she set the file for many factors scored by a freshman in a single season.

However the Huskies prevailed, as Bueckers, who just lately was hailed by Auriemma the “greatest participant in America,” led her staff with 28 factors, 10 rebounds and 6 assists.

Bueckers, a 22-year-old redshirt junior, introduced in February she would return to UConn for yet another season as an alternative of choosing the WNBA.

In 2021, she grew to become the primary freshman to win the Naismith, Related Press and Wood participant of the 12 months awards.

“Simply a lot pleasure and pleasure for this staff,” Bueckers stated. “I’m so proud. We’re not even purported to be right here, and right here we’re.”

Notably, USC and UConn had been enjoying on the Moda Heart in Portland – the location the place it was found Sunday that the three-point traces on the courtroom had been uneven and never the identical distance from the basket.

In a press release earlier Monday, NCAA vice chairman for girls’s basketball Lynn Holzman stated the difficulty was corrected, and the courtroom is now in “full compliance with NCAA enjoying guidelines.” She added what occurred in Portland “was an remoted incident.”

“We apologize for this error and the size of time for which it went unnoticed,” Holzman stated. “Merely put, this courtroom didn’t meet our expectations, and the NCAA ought to have caught the error sooner.”

To channel the film “That is Spinal Faucet,” the amplification on this night time of the NCAA event went to 11.

“RIP to the viewership numbers, proper? It’s going to crush every thing,” USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb stated Sunday.

“I feel we’d all let you know, proper, it’s USC towards UConn, and it’s LSU towards Iowa. However star energy drives narratives in athletics. It’s why the NBA took off, you understand, when there have been faces to it, going all the best way again to Magic and Larry and Michael Jordan.”

“The NCAA received it proper, as a result of tonight’s ladies’s event matchups are among the finest in historical past!” Magic Johnson stated in a post on X.

“There may be star energy on all 4 groups, nice teaching, and all have excellent storylines on how they made it to the Elite Eight! As a basketball fan and a fan of ladies’s sports activities, that is heaven for me!”