‘Unlike anyone we’ve seen’: WNBA seizes Clark spotlight

NEW YORK — The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) will look to harness record-smashing sharpshooter Caitlin Clark’s super-sized star power when she joins the professional ranks on Monday.

Clark is expected to go first overall in the WNBA Draft to the Indiana Fever after more than 18 million tuned in for her final college game this week, where South Carolina stayed undefeated to deny her Iowa team the NCAA title.

It was the most-watched basketball game of any kind in the U.S. since 2019 — besting the NBA — in what was widely seen as a landmark moment for women’s sports.

“We have a star coming into this draft kind of unlike anyone we’ve seen,” Hall of Famer and ESPN analyst Rebecca Lobo told reporters.

“We haven’t seen a player drive ticket sales like this, we haven’t seen a player drive ratings like this... In terms of attention, we’ve never, ever, ever seen anything like this.”

Clark became appointment viewing with her astonishing logo threes and uncanny no-look passing ability, as she broke Pete Maravich’s all-time NCAA scoring record this season.

She joins a WNBA on the rise, after its most-watched season in more than two decades, with viewership across networks ABC, ESPN networks and CBS averaging 505,000, thanks in part to a rivalry between “superteams” Las Vegas Aces and New York Liberty.

“As much as Caitlin is propelling women’s basketball, women’s basketball is also propelling Caitlin because it’s having a moment,” said La Quita Frederick, the faculty director of Sports Industry Management at Georgetown University.

“What she is doing is she’s brought eyes that weren’t otherwise there,” she added. “Women were already excelling at the game... but the eyes weren’t there.”

The WNBA named her presumed new home, the Indiana Fever, a team of “significant focus” on the broadcast calendar, with 36 of its 40 contests to be nationally televised.