Two weeks after she broke the record for women, Caitlin Clark has become NCAA Division I basketball’s overall top scorer, period.
The Iowa Hawkeyes star went into Sunday’s game against the Ohio State Buckeyes needing 17 points to break “Pistol Pete” Maravich’s record of 3,667 career points, which stood for more than 50 years. And with a second-quarter free throw, she became the top-scoring player — man or woman — in NCAA basketball history.
Clark, 22, earned the women’s record Feb. 15 when she scored eight points in a game against Michigan and passed Kelsey Plum’s 3,527 career points in her career, which ended in 2017. She went on that night to score a career-high 49 points.
“I’m just really grateful, honestly, to be able to be here and make so many of my dreams come true,” Clark said after the history-making game, which Iowa won, 106-89.
She put up 33 points against Minnesota on Wednesday to cement her place atop the all-time career points among women to play for major colleges. The record had been held by Kansas great Lynette Woodard, who scored 3,650 points. (Woodard played from 1977 to 1981, when women’s sports were governed by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.)
The overall record comes on Clark’s final regular-season game as a college athlete. Though the 22-year-old senior has another year of eligibility, she announced earlier this week that she would enter the WNBA draft next month.
Her final season has been full of big moments and big numbers: She’s averaging 32 points per game, but at least four times this season she has racked up 40 points. The 6-foot guard from West Des Moines is also averaging more than 8 assists per game, and she recently recorded the 1,000th assist of her college career, making her only the sixth woman in college basketball history to do so.
With the scoring record in hand, Clark is now doubt looking to lead her team, 25-4, to a national title. Last year, they made a run to the NCAA title game, where they lost to LSU.
Maravich’s NCAA men’s scoring record was 3,667 points, which he set playing for LSU from 1968 to 1970.
After college, Maravich went on to an NBA career in which he was a five-time All-Star. He played for the Atlanta Hawks and the then-New Orleans Jazz and for one season with the Boston Celtics.Maravich died in 1988 in Pasadena, California, at 40 years old.
