SEATTLE \u2014 Caitlin Clark put on quite a show, having one of the greatest performances in NCAA Tournament history to help Iowa end a 30-year Final Four drought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She had 41 points, 12 assists and 10 rebounds to lead the No. 2 seed Hawkeyes to a 97-83 win over fifth-seeded Louisville on Sunday night and send the team to its first women’s Final Four in since 1993.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI dreamed of this moment as a little girl, to take a team to the Final Four and be in these moments and have confetti fall down on me,\u201d said Clark, who is a Iowa native.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The unanimous first-team All-American<\/a> was as dominant as she’s been all season in getting the Hawkeyes to Dallas for the women’s NCAA Tournament<\/a> national semifinals on Friday night. The Seattle 4 Region champion will face the winner of the Greenville 1 region that has South Carolina playing Maryland on Monday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI thought our team played really well. That\u2019s what it\u2019s all about. I was going to give it every single thing I had,\u201d said Clark, who was the region’s most outstanding player. \u201cWhen I came here I said I wanted to take this program to the Final Four, and all you\u2019ve got to do is dream. And all you\u2019ve got to do is believe and work your butt off to get there. That\u2019s what I did, and that\u2019s what our girls did and that\u2019s what our coaches did and we\u2019re going to Dallas, baby.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iowa (30-6) hadn’t been to the Final Four since Hall of Fame coach C. Vivian Stringer led the team to its lone appearance in 1993. Before Sunday, the team had only been to one other Elite Eight \u2014 in 2019 \u2014 since the Final Four team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clark had the 11th triple-double of her career and the 19th in NCAA Tournament history. She had the first 30- and 40-point triple-double in March Madness history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt’s like a storybook, been like that all year long,\u201d Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said. \u201cWe keep talking about destiny and how it’s supposed to happen. … She’s spectacular. I don’t know how else to describe what she does on the basketball court. A 40-point triple-double against Louisville to go to the Final Four. Are you kidding me? That’s mind-boggling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trailing by five at the half, Louisville cut its deficit to 48-47 before Clark and the Hawkeyes scored the next 11 points as part of a 17-6 run to blow the game open. That brought most of the pro-Iowa crowd of nearly 12,000 fans to their feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Louisville was down 22 with just under 6 minutes left before going on a 13-1 run to get within 86-76 with 2:10 left. The Cardinals could get no closer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clark left the game with 22.7 seconds left to a loud ovation from the crowd as she hugged her coach. After the game, Clark paraded around the court holding the regional trophy high above her head, delighting the thousands of fans who stuck around to celebrate their Hawkeyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hailey Van Lith scored 27 points and Olivia Cochran had 20 points and 14 rebounds to lead Louisville (26-12).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clark hit eight of the Hawkeyes\u2019 season-high 16 3-pointers, including a few from just past the March Madness logo. It was a school record for the Hawkeyes in the NCAA Tournament, blowing past the previous mark of 13 against Gonzaga in 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Louisville scored the first eight points of the game, forcing Iowa to call timeout. Then Clark got going. The 6-foot junior scored the first seven points for the Hawkeyes and finished the opening quarter with 15 points. When she wasn\u2019t scoring, she found open teammates with precision passes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She also had four assists in the first 10 minutes, accounting for every one of Iowa\u2019s points as the Hawkeyes led 25-21.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clark continued her mastery in the second quarter, hitting shots from all over the court, including a few of her famous long-distance 3s from near the logo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Louisville was able to stay in the game, thanks to Van Lith. After scoring the first six points of the game, she went quiet before getting going late in the second quarter. She had 11 points in the second quarter as the Cardinals found themselves down 48-43 at the break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clark had 22 points and eight assists in the opening 20 minutes enroute to the fourth-highest scoring total all-time in a NCAA regional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShe played great, she made some big shots,\u201d Louisville coach Jeff Walz said of Clark. \u201cShe passed the ball well. we turned her over at times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1,000-POINT CLUB<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clark has 984 points this season and is looking to join former Hawkeye Megan Gustafson with 1,000 points in a single year. Four other players have done it, including Villanova\u2019s Maddy Siegrist, who accomplished the feat this season. Kelsey Plum, Jackie Stiles and Odyssey Sims were the others to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n HOMETOWN HERO<\/p>\n\n\n\n Van Lith once again played well in her home state. The small-town standout from 130 miles away from Seattle grew into being one of the best prep players in the country, the all-time state high school leader in scoring and now a star for the Cardinals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hundreds of fans from her hometown of Cashmere, which has a population of 3,200, took in the game, cheering the Louisville star on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n EMOTIONAL DAY<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a bittersweet day for Iowa assistant coach Jan Jensen. Her dad Dale died in the morning after battling pancreatic cancer for a year. He was 86.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe didn\u2019t sound so good the last couple days and I was kind of fretting, \u2018When am I going to go if we go to Dallas?\u2019” she said. \u201cI just feel like he knew. He was never a high maintenance guy, he was never a guy who made it complicated with me in anything. So I think, he told my people at home, I\u2019m not ready to go until Jan\u2019s team is done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SEATTLE \u2014 Caitlin Clark put on quite a show, having one of the greatest performances in NCAA Tournament history to help Iowa end a 30-year Final Four drought. She had 41 points, 12 assists and 10 rebounds to lead the No. 2 seed Hawkeyes to a 97-83 win over fifth-seeded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":270658,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=270570"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270659,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270570\/revisions\/270659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/270658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}