Caitlin Clark Sets Assist Record in Hawkeye Win

Senior Point Guard Leads Iowa Past Minnesota Saturday Breaking B1G Mark

Somewhere are all of Caitlin Clark’s commemorative basketballs, awards, plaques, whatever memorabilia that keeps growing as her resumé just keeps adding record after record.

A few more awards are coming after Iowa’s 94-71 win over Minnesota on Saturday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Clark has 904 in her career, passing Ohio State’s Samantha Prahalis. Clark, who recorded her sixth double-double of the season and 49th of her career, moved into fifth place all-time on the NCAA Division I career scoring list with 3,149 points. She also became the first Division I player — man or woman — to have 3,000 or more points, 900 or more assists and 800 or more rebounds in a career.

So, get ready for another commemorative ball, although Clark isn’t sure where in her locker is the one she got for passing 3,000 career points.

“I have a couple of storage units back home my parents put stuff in,” Clark said. “The 3,000-point ball is just sitting in our locker room. Sometimes it gets lost in my locker, I don’t know, until I clean it out, or until I make one of my teammates clean it out. They get so annoyed, they clean it for me.”

“It needs to be cleaned,” coach Lisa Bluder quickly added.

The Hawkeyes were full of jokes all day, and it started before the tipoff, when forward Kate Martin saw herself on the video board and waved to the camera. Clark bent over, cracking up, and the rest of the Hawkeyes followed.

“I was just excited to come out and play,” Clark said. “We kind of had to sit for, what, over a week, without playing basketball. I thought our team was really loose.”

The Hawkeyes hadn’t played since a December 21 rout of Loyola (Chicago), but there was no rust. They started the game with a 16-4 run, led by 22 at one point in the second half, and had a 49-31 halftime lead.

“I thought we prepped really well for this game,” Clark said. “I thought our scouting report was really good. We changed a few things on the defensive end we don’t really do, and I thought we executed really well tonight.”

Clark said she didn’t know anything about any of the milestones until they were announced at the end of the third quarter.

Clark broke Prahalis’ record with a pass on Hannah Stuelke’s layup with 47 seconds left in the third quarter.

“Caitlin always finds me,” said Stuelke, who had 19 points.

Iowa (13-1 overall, 2-0 Big Ten) won its 10th consecutive game, the longest in the program since the 2004-05 started the season with 13 wins.

Minnesota (11-2, 1-1), one of the youngest teams in the Big Ten, struggled to handle the veteran Hawkeyes, and it showed, especially early..

Amaya Battle had 16 points for Minnesota. Mara Braun had 15 points and Sophie Hart added 13.

Martin added 13 for the Hawkeyes.