Women's Fastbreak On SI

Caitlin Clark Cracks Joke About National Championship Losses at Iowa

Former Iowa Hawkeye Caitlin Clark is making light of her former team's two consecutive NCAA national championship game defeats.

Grant Young

Oct 26, 2024; Iowa City, Iowa, USA; Former Iowa Hawkeye and current Indiana Fever WNBA star Caitlin Clark looks on while being honored during the game between the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Northwestern Wildcats at Kinnick Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images
Oct 26, 2024; Iowa City, Iowa, USA; Former Iowa Hawkeye and current Indiana Fever WNBA star Caitlin Clark looks on while being honored during the game between the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Northwestern Wildcats at Kinnick Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images / Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images

Caitlin Clark asserted herself as arguably the best women's college basketball player of all time during her four years spent at the University of Iowa.

This is proven by her setting the NCAA record for most points ever scored, regardless of gender. However, there is one clear argument against her when declaring who the women's college basketball GOAT is: she never won a national championship.

Clark's Hawkeyes teams were the NCAA Tournament runner-up in both the 2022-23 and the 2023-24 seasons, having lost to Angel Reese and the LSU Tigers in 2023 and Dawn Staley's South Carolina Gamecocks in 2024.

These title game losses surely hurt Clark when they occurred. But she seems to have healed from them (at least in part), according to a joke she made on a recent podcast.

Clark returned to Iowa two weekends ago to reunite with former teammates Kate Martin, Gabbie Marshall, Jada Gyamfi, and others.

She also recorded an episode of Gyamfi's "Fresh Tawk" podcast, which aired on Tuesday. When the NCAA Tournament was brought up, Clark said, "It's crazy they start with 68 teams [in the tournament] now... And we made it to the last two, two years in a row."

"Top two," Martin added.

Then Gyamfi said, "Top two, not one," which had all four girls laughing.

After a few seconds, Clark said, "And we still proud of it. We good at second place, okay? We're good at second place!"

Although Clark still seems to be feeling some pain about being runner-up, because when Gyamfi jokingly said, "That's what we wanted, little did they know," she gave a very dubious facial expression in reply.

Jokes aside, Clark's competitive drive will probably make it so she's never fully over those championship defeats.

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Grant Young
GRANT YOUNG

Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.

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