Iowa vs. Colorado Sweet 16 odds, best bets

It’s no secret the growth of women’s college basketball has exploded over the last couple of years, and perhaps there’s been no greater sign of its popularity than how the sportsbooks have responded this season.

DraftKings now lists odds for every NCAA Women’s March Madness Tournament game, and FanDuel has added four different tabs to its women’s college basketball menu:

• NCAAW Games: Odds for every tournament game
• Star Player Props: Bets for players like Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo and Sonia Citron, N.C. State Aziaha James, UConn’s Paige Bueckers, Indiana’s Mackenzie Holmes and USC’s JuJu Watkins 
• NCAAW Futures: Regional winners and national champion

The fourth tab is a big reason the first three have been added to FanDuel’s overall menu this season. It’s simply titled: Caitlin Clark. 

No one, in either the men’s or women’s games, is bigger than Iowa’s sharpshooting triple-double threat, and the sportsbooks appear to be capitalizing on her growing popularity.

For Iowa’s Sweet 16 nationally televised matchup with Colorado on Saturday (yes, the networks are opportunistic, too, as it will be broadcast live on ABC), FanDuel lists seven separate props just for Clark, with another five tournament specials for the Iowa guard. 

And if that wasn’t enough, you can already bet on her first season in the WNBA, even though she has yet to be drafted (although there’s very little drama over which player the Indiana Fever are targeting with the first overall pick).

Let the Fever deal with Clark and her first season; we’ll tackle one of her props against Colorado on Saturday afternoon.

Caitlin Clark player props vs. Colorado

Caitlin Clark over 32.5 points (-112)

Saturday’s game is a rematch of a Sweet 16 a year ago when the Hawkeyes beat the Buffs by 10 in their run to the national title game.

Clark scored 31 points and added eight assists in the game, but she had help as Kate Martin, McKenna Warnock and Monika Czinano all added double-digit scoring in the 87-77 Iowa victory.

With Warnock and Czinano having moved on, Clark is still receiving contributions from her teammates. but it seems to be a different combo every night.

In tournament play (three in the Big Ten, two in the NCAAs), Clark has averaged 29.0 points per game, while six different teammates have hit double-figure scoring at least once.

Only one player on Colorado has ever been on a team that has beaten Iowa during Clark’s tenure. That is guard Maddie Nolan, who was on the 2022 Michigan team that beat the Hawkeyes by eight points.

Michigan went into that matchup with a focus of shutting down Clark’s teammates and letting the dynamic guard get her own. Clark put up 29 shots and scored 46 points, a career-high at the time. None of her teammates scored more than 13.

Colorado coach JR Payne was asked at her Sweet 16 news conference earlier in the week if that was a potential tactic she could use on Saturday against Clark and Iowa.

“That’s definitely something that our staff will have to analyze and talk about, and probably something that we won’t be sharing with everyone,” Payne said.

No doubt, Payne has already looked at that Michigan-Iowa game, as well as what West Virginia did to the Hawkeyes in the Round of 32. The Mountaineers held Iowa to just 64 points, its second-lowest output in more than two years.

While Clark scored exactly half of the points, her teammates struggled against WVU’s physical pressure defense, especially from long range where they shot 0-for-17 from beyond the arc.

That type of defensive plan gave Michigan a victory in 2022 and made the Hawkeyes’ matchup last week with the Mountaineers much more competitive than anticipated (Iowa was a 15.5-point favorite).

Betting on March Madness 2024?

With hopes of pulling off the upset, expect Colorado to employ a similar defensive tactic on Saturday, with Clark getting a major share of her team’s points once again.

The over on her points prop (32.5) seems more than doable. I’d also sprinkle the over on her 40-plus projection.