Iowa College’s ladies’s basketball staff and head coach Jan Jensen are going by 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 staff’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 previously, as a result of these guys are giving me lots and so they’re nonetheless younger, and I’ve to develop a little bit 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 report amongst each males’s and ladies’s gamers, main the staff to the NCAA championship sport 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 follow for the NCAA ladies’s school basketball championship sport between Iowa and South Carolina on April 6, 2024. (Zach Boyden-Holmes / USA TODAY NETWORK by way of 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 turning into the primary rookie to report 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 staff introduced it can have a ceremony to retire Clark’s jersey on Feb. 2.
Clark’s No. 22, which she wears for the Fever, will dangle from the rafters at Carver-Hawkeye Area in Iowa Metropolis after a ceremony honoring this system’s most completed participant.
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Iowa’s Caitlin Clark reacts whereas taking part in Holy Cross in a first-round NCAA Match sport at Carver-Hawkeye Area 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 will likely 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 in addition criticism from some, together with Washington Mystics proprietor Sheila Johnson, who recently wondered in a CNN interview why Clark was tapped for the respect and never your entire WNBA. Johnson recommended 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 coated 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.
