Iowa College’s ladies’s basketball group and head coach Jan Jensen are going by way of their first season with out star Caitlin Clark since 2019.
The Hawkeyes are off to a 12-4 begin and are ranked twenty third within the nation, however they’ve struggled with convention play within the first 12 months of the newly-expanded Huge 10, going simply 2-3.
Jensen addressed the group’s “lack of senior management” to reporters after a loss to Illinois on Thursday — with the Hawkeyes having misplaced back-to-back convention video games for the primary time since Clark’s freshman season — citing the youth of the present roster.
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“I am unable to afford to match what has occurred up to now, as a result of these guys are giving me so much and so they’re nonetheless younger, and I’ve to develop a bit of little bit of senior management or upperclassman management, as a result of that’s what we’re lacking,” Jensen mentioned.
In 4 seasons at Iowa, Clark broke the NCAA’s all-time scoring document amongst each males’s and girls’s gamers, main the group to the NCAA championship recreation twice. She was additionally a consensus Nationwide Participant of the 12 months as a junior and senior.
Iowa Hawkeyes head coach Lisa Bluder, left, and Caitlin Clark discuss throughout apply for the NCAA ladies’s faculty basketball championship recreation between Iowa and South Carolina on April 6, 2024. (Zach Boyden-Holmes / USA TODAY NETWORK through Imagn Photographs)
Clark was chosen with the No. 1 choose in final 12 months’s WNBA Draft by the Indiana Fever after her Iowa profession.
As a WNBA rookie in 2024, Clark set data for essentially the most factors and 3-pointers by a rookie in league historical past, whereas additionally changing into the primary rookie to document a triple-double, a feat she completed twice. Her 337 assists not solely had been essentially the most by a rookie, they had been essentially the most by any participant ever in a single season.
The Iowa ladies’s basketball group introduced it’ll have a ceremony to retire Clark’s jersey on Feb. 2.
Clark’s No. 22, which she wears for the Fever, will hold from the rafters at Carver-Hawkeye Enviornment in Iowa Metropolis after a ceremony honoring this system’s most completed participant.
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Iowa’s Caitlin Clark reacts whereas enjoying Holy Cross in a first-round NCAA Event recreation at Carver-Hawkeye Enviornment in Iowa Metropolis, Iowa, on March 23, 2024. (Julia Hansen/Iowa Metropolis Press-Citizen / USA TODAY NETWORK)
Clark is predicted to be in attendance, and the occasion shall be broadcast on FOX.
Clark’s jersey retirement will come simply two months after Time journal named her the publication’s Athlete of the 12 months. The selection prompted reward, but additionally criticism from some, together with Washington Mystics proprietor Sheila Johnson, who recently wondered in a CNN interview why Clark was tapped for the honour and never all the WNBA. Johnson prompt it needed to do with Clark’s race.
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Jackson Thompson is a sports activities author for Fox Information Digital. He beforehand labored for ESPN and Enterprise Insider. Jackson has lined the Tremendous Bowl and NBA Finals, and has interviewed iconic figures Usain Bolt, Rob Gronkowski, Jerry Rice, Troy Aikman, Mike Trout, David Ortiz and Roger Clemens.
