Iowa-South Carolina perfect matchup for the title
Take your pick now, between the perfect team, undefeated and overall No. 1 seed South Carolina, and the perfect storm, all-time NCAA scoring leader and otherworldly Iowa star Caitlin Clark.
We got the game we wanted, basketball world, an NCAA women’s basketball title tilt that is about to shatter some more ratings records.
But first, a minute on how we got here, and a hope that by the time these two No. 1 seeds tip off Sunday afternoon in Cleveland (3 p.m., ABC), the conversation is as much about the majesty of what South Carolina did to North Carolina State in the second half of their game as it is about what the referees did for Iowa in the final seconds of theirs. If all you are still talking about is the end of that thrilling nightcap, when UConn’s Aaliyah Edwards was called for an offensive foul while trying to set a screen, thus costing UConn the chance at a potential go-ahead shot, you are burying the drama and heroics that delivered us to that moment.
You are missing how much Clark, and her sophomore teammate Hannah Stuelke, willed Iowa to a second consecutive championship game, rebounding from as many as 12 points down early on to tie it by halftime and deliver a second half of scintillating back-and-forth action.
You’re missing how Clark overcame one of the least-productive first halves she’s endured in this record-setting season, just 6 points and no 3-pointers at the break, and returned to wake up Iowa in the second, her 21 points, 9 rebounds, and 7 assists a lesson in
determination and drive.
You’re missing how Stuelke, in coach Lisa Bluder’s words, grew up right in front of our eyes with a game-high 23 points, one of the few Clark teammates ready and able to convert her sizzling bounce passes into layups.
You’re missing how Geno Auriemma did one of the best coaching jobs of his 11-time national championship career, not simply in guiding his injury-ravaged UConn roster to the brink of another title, but with a game plan for Clark that made every inch of her movement an exercise in navigating human traffic.
You’re missing how South Carolina, also tied at halftime against N.C. State in the first national semifinal, obliterated the Wolfpack with a 29-6 third quarter, an outburst coach Dawn Staley explained with a simple, “We turned up the heat.”
And yes, fouls, whether they come in the final seconds of a game or not, whether they appear egregious to the naked eye or not, are part of the game, are destined to be dissected and debated afterward. To have a national conversation centered around a foul at the end of a women’s game? Count it as another welcome-to-the-mainstream moment.
For my money, if a foul is a foul it should be called regardless of time and place in the game. And Edwards, with her electric slide of moving feet, did enough to earn the whistle. Gabbie Marshall’s flailing arms helped sell it, but the contact was there. A bummer, yes, for having such a profound impact in the moment, but wrong? Not to me.
“Everybody can make a big deal of that one single play, but not one single play wins a basketball game or loses a basketball game,” said UConn’s Paige Bueckers, the player trying to get away from Marshall for a potential winning shot when Edwards’s foul, with 4.6 seconds remaining, ended the possession.
“I feel there were a lot of mistakes that I made that could have prevented that play from even being that big. You can look at one play and say, oh, that killed us or that hurt us. But we should have done a better job, I should have done a better job of making sure we didn’t leave the game up to chance like that and leave the game up to one bad call going our way and that deciding it.”
She’s not wrong. Even after the foul, Clark went to the line and missed the second of her two free throws, only to see her teammates do a better job boxing out than UConn. Then, after a held ball and a possession arrow that favored Iowa, there Clark was with the inbounds pass, throwing it off the back and out of bounds off a facingthe-wrong-way Bueckers, wasting a few more precious ticks of the clock.
With all the madness swirling around her, Clark’s basketball IQ still rose.
“I watch a lot of basketball. I understand basketball,” Clark said, “and she had her back turned to me. The biggest thing at that point in the game is you just want the clock to go down. I mean, you don’t want to give them the ball, but she had her back completely turned, so I was trying to waste some clock. It just came to my brain and I went for it, and it kind of worked.”
Say this for Clark: If she pulls off the walkoff win, if she adds a championship to an already singular résumé of greatness, what she did along the way to earn it will never be forgotten. It only feels like that first-round win over Holy Cross was a lifetime ago because of everything Iowa has done since.
Holy Cross didn’t make it easy, and the senior-laden, experienced Crusaders gave Iowa everything it could handle.
But on the Hawkeyes went, and after moving past West Virginia
and Colorado, Iowa hit the headlines with a vengeance. An Elite Eight rematch with LSU, the team that beat them in last year’s title game. A national semifinal against UConn, a team with the closest singular star in Clark’s orbit, the former national player of the year Bueckers.
And now, South Carolina, a team that has gone 109-3 the last three seasons, that won the national championship two years ago, and that is on a vengeance tour of its own after dropping last year’s national semifinal to Iowa.
The perfect team or the perfect storm. Take your pick.