Caitlin Clark became a national sensation at Iowa − but her rise to stardom nearly didn’t happen as a Hawkeye.
The current Indiana Fever star is an Iowa native and attended Dowling Catholic High School in West Des Moines.
In her senior season in 2019, she was committed to playing at Notre Dame, which had just won a national championship in 2018. Clark’s desire to be part of the Fighting Irish is revealed in the upcoming book “On Her Game,” by USA TODAY Sports’ Christine Brennan.
Then-coach Muffet McGraw was among the top women’s coaches in the country, and her strong team was appealing to Clark. McGraw first saw Clark play at an AAU tournament when she was a high school sophomore and remembered how great of a passer she was.
“Just how much she wanted to win, her competitive spirit. I just liked her right away,” McGraw said. “I remember talking to her, thinking, ‘I want to coach her.’ I just could relate to her. I thought we had a pretty good connection, which doesn’t always happen, because as I got older and kids got younger, I have nothing in common with them. But with her, it was different.
“I always came away from my conversations with her thinking, ‘Man, I really want her, I really want her to come here. I think she’d be great.’”
Clark’s ‘soft commitment’ raises questions
However, something was off. Even though Clark told McGraw she’d play for her, she didn’t publicly reveal it.
McGraw noticed the “soft commitment” and how Clark was in contact with Iowa coaches. The Notre Dame coach ran into one of the Iowa staffers at a funeral and asked why they were still talking to Clark, at which point the Hawkeye staff member revealed it was Clark who was calling them.
“That’s when I knew, yeah, okay, we’re done,” McGraw said.
Clark told McGraw in November 2019 she would not attend Notre Dame, the same month she announced her commitment to the Hawkeyes.
Clark’s decision was widely expected by college basketball coaches, as several knew she wanted to stay close to home. Even though McGraw and other coaches missed out on having the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer, the two-time national championship winning coach believes Clark made the right call, adding her career could have been vastly different at a perennial women’s college basketball power such as Notre Dame or Connecticut.
“It would have been great to have her at Notre Dame, and our fan base would have loved her,” McGraw said. “But Iowa just made so much sense. She made a great decision, looking at how it turned out.”
Aside from scoring 3,951 points during her time at Iowa and becoming the No. 1 pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft, Clark led Iowa to back-to-back Final Four appearances in 2023 and 2024, making it all the way to the national championship game in both seasons.
(Reprinted from “On Her Game” by Christine Brennan, Simon and Schuster, 2025)
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Caitlin Clark became a legend at Iowa, but she almost wasn’t a Hawkeye
