The Caitlin Clark show fueled a Big Ten Tournament sellout

The full allotment of tickets for the Big Ten women’s basketball tournament was sold nearly two weeks ago, assuring the attendance total will more than double the event record set last year.

These teams aren’t about to be awestruck by large and loud crowds.

From Iowa to Maryland, with Indiana and Ohio State in between, the conference has continued to stage well-attended games in a trend that suggests it has staying power long after Caitlin Clark — now the career scoring leader among all major college players — launches her last college 3-pointer.

“They’re not just here for me. I’m sure I help, but at the end of the day, we have a really great team and a really great culture and that’s what makes it so fun,” Clark said Sunday after Iowa’s sold-out home slate concluded with a win over Big Ten regular-season champion Ohio State.

The third-ranked Hawkeyes (26-4, 15-3) finished second in conference play. They enter the bracket in a quarterfinal game on Friday night against either seventh-seeded Penn State or 10th-seeded Wisconsin.

The Big Ten could not have timed its decision to hold the tournament in Minneapolis any better, with the host arena Target Center a convenient drive of less than five hours from Iowa’s campus for each of Clark’s final two seasons in black and gold.

The Hawkeyes beat the Buckeyes in the championship game last year in front of a Big Ten Tournament-record crowd of 9,505. The five-day total of 47,923 in 2023 will be smashed this time, with a final figure of more than 109,000 expected. That’s an average of about 15,500 per session. Tickets are only available on the secondary market.

“We’ve played in environments like that all year, so we’ll be ready for it,” said Jacy Sheldon, the star guard for fourth-ranked Ohio State and the conference’s third-leading scorer.

The Buckeyes (26-4, 16-2) face either eighthseeded Maryland or ninth-seeded Illinois in their quarterfinal on Friday. Iowa has two consecutive Big Ten Tournament titles to defend, but like Ohio State the overarching goal this weekend is to win enough to secure a No. 1 seed for the NCAA Tournament.