Iowa College’s ladies’s basketball crew 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 Large 10, going simply 2-3.
Jensen addressed the crew’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 check what has occurred up to now, as a result of these guys are giving me lots they usually’re nonetheless younger, and I’ve to develop slightly 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 ladies’s gamers, main the crew to the NCAA championship sport twice. She was additionally a consensus Nationwide Participant of the Yr as a junior and senior.
Iowa Hawkeyes head coach Lisa Bluder, left, and Caitlin Clark speak throughout observe for the NCAA ladies’s faculty basketball championship sport 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 decide 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 probably 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 achieved twice. Her 337 assists not solely had been probably the most by a rookie, they had been probably the most by any participant ever in a single season.
The Iowa ladies’s basketball crew introduced it would have a ceremony to retire Clark’s jersey on Feb. 2.
Clark’s No. 22, which she wears for the Fever, will cling from the rafters at Carver-Hawkeye Area in Iowa Metropolis after a ceremony honoring this system’s most achieved participant.
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Iowa’s Caitlin Clark reacts whereas enjoying 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 anticipated 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 Yr. 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 glory and never the whole WNBA. Johnson urged 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.
