Iowa’s Caitlin Clark has become a household name during this year’s NCAA basketball tournament by putting on a scoring display for the ages. She has scored over 40+ points twice, including in the Final Four against South Carolina. However, her scoring run has highlighted an uncomfortable truth for Iowa football. Nine months ago, the football team finished their season having scored just 230 points over 12 games. Clark has surpassed that total in just eight postseason games with 235. While this is apples and oranges, this is INSANE.
It is a startling statistic and speaks to the dominance of Clark, a freshman who has already left an indelible mark on college basketball in her first season. She has exploded during the NCAA tournament, finishing with a triple-double in the Elite Eight and scoring 41 points in each of the last two games.
Although the stats draw an embarrassing comparison between the two Hawkeye teams, the situation is not all doom and gloom for Iowa football. They have traditionally been a defense-first team and rely on controlling the game’s pace to secure victories. However, the offense will need to contribute more next season if they wish to compete with the Big Ten’s best.
Iowa fans have long grown accustomed to low-scoring affairs on the football field, but they have embraced the high-flying feats that Caitlin Clark has shown off during March Madness. Nevertheless, the current predicament provides excellent motivation for the Hawkeyes to score in droves when the football season kicks off on Thursday, September 2nd. For now, however, we are witnessing the rise of a college basketball superstar, poised to take the country by storm for years to come.