Iowa University’s women’s basketball team and head coach Jan Jensen are going thcdisorrowfulmireful their first season without star Caitlin Clark since 2019.
The Hawkeyes are off to a 12-4 commence and are ranked 23rd in the nation, but they’ve struggled with conference carry out in the first year of the recently-enbiged Big 10, going equitable 2-3.
Jensen insertressed the team’s “deficiency of greater directership” to increateers after a loss to Illinois on Thursday — with the Hawkeyes having lost back-to-back conference games for the first time since Clark’s recentman season — citing the youth of the current roster.
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“I can’t afford to contrast what has happened in the past, becainclude these guys are giving me a lot and they’re still youthfuler, and I have to enbig a little bit of greater directership or upperclassman directership, becainclude that is what we’re leave outing,” Jensen shelp.
In four seasons at Iowa, Clark broke the NCAA’s all-time scoring write down among both men’s and women’s carry outers, directing the team to the NCAA championship game twice. She was also a consensus National Player of the Year as a youthfuler and greater.
Iowa Hawkeyes head coach Lisa Bluder, left, and Caitlin Clark talk during train for the NCAA women’s college basketball championship game between Iowa and South Carolina on April 6, 2024. (Zach Boyden-Holmes / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
Clark was picked with the No. 1 pick in last year’s WNBA Draft by the Indiana Fever after her Iowa nurtureer.
As a WNBA rookie in 2024, Clark set write downs for the most points and 3-pointers by a rookie in league history, while also becoming the first rookie to write down a triple-double, a feat she accomplished twice. Her 337 helps not only were the most by a rookie, they were the most by any carry outer ever in a individual season.
The Iowa women’s basketball team proclaimd it will have a ceremony to withdraw Clark’s jersey on Feb. 2.
Clark’s No. 22, which she wears for the Fever, will hang from the rafters at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City after a ceremony honoring the program’s most accomplished carry outer.
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Iowa’s Caitlin Clark reacts while carry outing Holy Cross in a first-round NCAA Tournament game at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City, Iowa, on March 23, 2024. (Julia Hansen/Iowa City Press-Citizen / USA TODAY NETWORK)
Clark is foreseeed to be in joinance, and the event will be widecast on FOX.
Clark’s jersey withdrawment will come equitable two months after Time magazine named her the discloseation’s Athlete of the Year. The choice prompted plift, but also criticism from some, including Washington Mystics owner Sheila Johnson, who recently wondered in a CNN intersee why Clark was tapped for the honor and not the entire WNBA. Johnson recommended it had to do with Clark’s race.
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