Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball superstar Caitlin Clark put on a clinic against the defending national champion LSU Tigers in their Elite 8 showdown, and her head coach, Lisa Bluder, was all for it.
After the Hawkeyes’ 94-87 win over the Tigers, the Iowa head coach couldn’t help but heap high praise on her star player.
“Yeah, I mean, Caitlin, I feel like I’ve talked about her, like used every word imaginable to describe her. But I thought what she said today about her maturity has just grown so much over four years, I really saw that tonight,” said Bluder. Really, it could have been a highly emotional game. It could have been a lot of talking going on out there. Just from what happened at the end of last year. Honestly, she put it aside. She put everything aside.”
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“I think her maturity, just her communication with her teammates was really good tonight. She was in the huddle really building others up, which I love when she does that because it means so much coming from her rather than me. But her distance shots were amazing tonight. Her logo threes were incredible. How do you defend that, right? It is nearly impossible. That obviously gave us some great momentum.”
Clark was sensational in the game, finishing the night with a double-double of 41 points and 12 assists to go along with seven rebounds.
Her three-point shooting will undoubtedly be the thing that sticks out the most when fans reminisce about this game. However, as her head coach highlighted, her maturity and communication with her teammates were the difference makers. That resulted in the twelve assists that helped make her unguardable just as much as her perimeter shooting.
One of the more significant things Clark did to keep LSU unbalanced started in the first quarter when she was able to get into the teeth of the Tigers’ defense and essentially their heads. Clark started the game with several blow-bys and drove to the basket, which forced LSU to respect her driving ability. That was something that Bluder was pleased with in the first quarter and, as it turns out, was a part of Iowa’s game plan.
“Yeah, I was really happy in the first quarter she got to the rim quite a bit and got off ball screens. We encouraged her to do that because we didn’t want her to start out with the logo threes. We thought she could get to the rim, and we wanted the higher percentage shots to begin with. I was pretty happy that she did that,” said Bluder.
“Then I’m telling third quarter, though, she came out with a different look in her eye. I could tell her all I wanted to at that time to get to the rim, and it wasn’t going to happen.”
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