CLEVELAND — Caitlin Clark was special. Paige Bueckers was the sensation.
Four years ago, Clark was the nation’s fourth-ranked high school player.
Bueckers topped the list. In her first season, the UConn star became the face of college basketball and the first female freshman to win national player of the year honors, leading the Huskies to the Final Four after a one-sided Sweet 16 win over Clark and Iowa.
As sophomores, Bueckers battled injuries, but still ended up in the national title game, while Clark’s brilliant season ended with a second-round upset on Iowa’s home floor.
It wasn’t until Bueckers tore her ACL — and missed all of last season — that Clark seized the nation’s attention.
“People weren’t even mentioning Caitlin Clark when Paige was a freshman,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said Thursday. “It was all Paige, Paige, Paige. Now it’s all Caitlin, Caitlin, Caitlin …
“Had we kept winning, I don’t know that Paige would be any bigger or less talked about, and I don’t know that she would have the kind of impact that Caitlin’s had because they have different personalities, different games …
“But it would have been nice to find out.”
The hypotheticals only add more hype to Friday’s matchup of college basketball’s two best players on the game’s biggest stage at the peak of the sport’s popularity, as No. 1 Iowa (33-4) and No. 3 UConn (33-5) battle in the nightcap of the Final Four.
Clark is coming off a legendary 41-point, 12-assist performance that took down the defending champs. Bueckers has been just as dominant in the NCAA Tournament, most recently putting up 28 points, 10 rebounds, six assists, three steals and two blocks in a win over No. 1 USC.
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Bueckers’ versatility recently inspired Auriemma to declare her the “best player in America.”
This week, he playfully backtracked after the matchup with Division I’s all-time leading scorer was set.
“I hope Caitlin Clark had a personal agenda against LSU,” Auriemma said. “I know there’s nothing personal between me and her. I don’t need to be seeing her drop 50 on us … I love her. I think she’s the best player. Forget I ever said Paige is the best player in the country. I think she’s the best player of all time.
“We don’t plan on stopping her. I tried calling all the other coaches that have stopped her and none of them have answered the phone. We’re going to have to find a different way to win than stopping Caitlin Clark.”
It didn’t have to be this way.
Clark dreamed of playing under Auriemma, while watching her idol, Maya Moore, win titles at “the coolest place on earth.”
The UConn coach never extended an offer to Clark.
He’d already found the new face of the sport’s most powerful program.
“I committed to Paige Bueckers very, very early and it would have been silly for me to say to Paige, ‘Hey listen, we’re going to put you in the backcourt and then I’m going to try really hard to recruit Caitlin Clark,’ ” Auriemma said. “I don’t do it that way. Caitlin is obviously a tremendous player, a generational player. … Neither of us lost out. She made the best decision for her and it’s worked out great. We made the decision we thought we needed to make.”
It was easier to stand out at Iowa, which hadn’t made the Final Four since 1993, which offered Clark so much on-court freedom and asked her to shoulder so much responsibility that she could set so many records and elevate the sport.
Two years ago, Bueckers and UConn drew 4.85 million television viewers to the national title game, the highest-rating in 18 years.
Last season, a record 9.9 million people watched LSU defeat Iowa for the championship. This week, Clark and Angel Reese drew 12.3 million viewers to the Elite Eight.
Now comes a dream matchup years in the making, of Midwestern AAU foes, Team USA teammates and All-American icons, whose legacies and supremacy will be shaped by 40 minutes.
“It’s not Paige versus Caitlin, and it takes the entire team to win a basketball game,” Clark said. “Both of us are going to do everything we can.”
