How Caitlin Clark paved her method as WNBA’s Rookie of the 12 months (1:55)
Chiney Ogwumike seems to be again at Caitlin Clark’s record-breaking season that led her to changing into the WNBA Rookie of the 12 months. (1:55)
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Michael Voepel, ESPN Senior AuthorOct 3, 2024, 02:01 PM ET
- Michael Voepel is a senior author who covers the WNBA, girls’s school basketball and different school sports activities. Voepel started protecting girls’s basketball in 1984, and has been with ESPN since 1996.
Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark was a near-unanimous decide for WNBA Rookie of the 12 months, the league introduced Thursday.
Clark, the No. 1 draft decide in April, acquired 66 of 67 votes from a nationwide media panel. The opposite vote went to the Chicago Sky‘s Angel Reese, who was the No. 7 decide within the draft.
Fever gamers have gained the award in back-to-back seasons; Indiana ahead/heart Aliyah Boston gained the distinction final yr after she was additionally the No. 1 draft decide. Clark and Boston helped lead the Fever to their first playoff look since 2016 earlier than they have been swept within the first spherical by the Connecticut Sun.
“I’m extremely honored to be named Rookie of the 12 months, however greater than that, I’m grateful to everybody that supported me all through this previous season — my household and buddies, my teammates, the Fever group and everybody that cheered us on all season. I’m so pleased with what we achieved and so excited for what the long run holds,” Clark mentioned in a press release.
Clark was joined on the WNBA All-Rookie Group by Reese, Sky heart Kamilla Cardoso, the Los Angeles Sparks’ Rickea Jackson and the New York Liberty‘s Leonie Fiebich.
Clark had a record-breaking first WNBA season that adopted her history-making school profession at Iowa, the place she turned the all-time main scorer in Division I basketball, males’s or girls’s.
She began all 40 regular-season video games for the Fever, who went 20-20 and completed sixth within the league. She averaged 19.2 factors, a WNBA-best 8.4 assists, 5.7 rebounds and 1.3 steals in 35.4 minutes per recreation. She led all rookies in every of these classes besides rebounding, wherein she was third. Reese led the WNBA in rebounding common at 13.1.
Together with main the league in assists, Clark was first in 3-pointers (122) and second in minutes per recreation and free throw proportion (90.6). She was seventh general in scoring.
Her 337 assists set a WNBA single-season report, and she or he had a single-game report of 19 assists in opposition to the Dallas Wings in July. She additionally set a rookie season mark with 769 factors and have become the primary WNBA rookie to report a triple-double. (She had two.)
Talking after the Fever’s 87-81 loss in Sport 2 in opposition to the Solar, Clark mentioned she was thrilled in regards to the potential she and the workforce have forward of them.
“The enjoyable half is I really feel like I am simply scratching the floor,” Clark mentioned. “I do know I need to assist this franchise get even higher, assist my teammates get even higher, be higher for my teammates. I do know there’s loads of room for me to proceed to enhance, so that is what excites me essentially the most.”
