Iowa women’s basketball: How far can Caitlin Clark carry the Hawkeyes?

Caitlin Clark may be the best offensive player in the entire nation. How far can she take Iowa women’s basketball this season?

Iowa is currently a hotbed for women’s basketball. Only one state has multiple teams ranked in the top 10 of the AP’s preseason poll, and that state is Iowa, with the University of Iowa sitting at No. 4 and Iowa State at No. 8.

The Hawkeyes are led by Caitlin Clark, arguably the best guard in college basketball, especially when you factor in that UConn’s Paige Bueckers is out for the season. But now in her third season, can Clark get the Hawkeyes over the hump?

Iowa made it to the Sweet Sixteen during Clark’s freshman campaign, where the team lost by 20 to UConn. Last year, the team suffered a second-round exit, falling in an upset to Creighton.

But will this finally be the year for Iowa? The team hasn’t reached the Final Four since 1993. They’ve had one Elite Eight appearance since then, making it there in 2019 led by Iowa’s last great player, Megan Gustafson.

So, how far can Clark take the Hawkeyes this year?

Who is Caitlin Clark?

Before we can talk about how far Caitlin Clark can take the Hawkeyes, we should probably talk a little about how good Caitlin Clark is.

If you haven’t watched Caitlin Clark play basketball before, you can start here:

https://twitter.com/BenDiamond14/status/1490522144714936321?s=20&t=n_HHOpB5hWTY4LWPjyAVdQ

There’s no player in college basketball who is more willing to just fire a shot up from anywhere than Caitlin Clark. Give her an inch of space and she’s jacking up a logo 3. She’s not quite the Steph Curry of women’s college basketball because Clark’s brash shot-taking has hurt her efficiency, but she’s still the most exciting player to watch, and overall she’s the second or third-best player in the sport, behind Aliyah Boston and, depending on your perspective, Haley Jones.

Still, Clark might have seen her 3-point efficiency drop from 40.6 to 33.2 percent last year, but that doesn’t mean opponents are any less scared of what happens when she releases the basketball. She scored 27.0 points per game last year, the best mark in the nation. That comes after she also led the nation in scoring as a freshman.

Clark’s also a gifted passer. Her 8.0 assists per game last year led Division I, while her 7.1 assists as a freshman ranked third. She turns the ball over a lot, but that’ll happen when you’re one of the highest-usage players in the nation.

Iowa’s supporting cast

You can’t win without a good team around you. Luckily for Clark, she has a good team around her.

That starts with the team’s center, Monika Czinano. This will be Czinano’s fifth season with the Hawkeyes — last year, she averaged a career-high 21.2 points per game, which ranked 13th in Division I. Yep, Iowa not only has the best scorer in college basketball, but they also have a player who has finished top 50 in points per game in each of the last two years.

Digging into some shot data from CBB Analytics, Czinano ranked in the 92nd percentile last season in field goal percentage at the rim, making 74.4 percent of her attempts there. Notably, 64.2 percent of her total attempts came from there, which is part of why Czinano ended up second in all of Division I in field goal percentage, connecting on 67.9 percent of her shots.

Pairing the most lethal shotmaker in basketball with one of the most efficient bigs in basketball is a really, really good starting place for the Hawkeyes. But it doesn’t end there.

The team also brings back their other double-digit scorer in McKenna Warnock, who averaged 11.0 points per game and notably shot 40.4 percent from 3 on 3.9 attempts per game. There’s also strong shooting from Gabbie Marshall.

As far as players who could step into bigger roles, there’s AJ Ediger, a sophomore big who played in 14 games last year. Ediger was a top 50 recruit in ESPN’s HoopGurlz rankings and should see more minutes this year.

The Hawkeyes also added some intriguing freshmen. Taylor McCabe was the Nebraska Gatorade Player of the Year last year and ranked 88th by HoopGurlz. Jada Gyamfi was one of the best players in Iowa girls’ basketball last year. And Hannah Stuelke was the best of them all, winning Iowa Gatorade Player of the Year and sporting a 45th overall spot in the HoopGurlz rankings.

What’s Iowa’s ceiling?

Alright, so how far will Caitlin Clark take the Hawkeyes?

I think South Carolina and Stanford are on a collison course for the national title game, but the path to the other two Final Four spots is going to be wide open. Right now, Texas and Iowa are ranked in those spots in the AP poll. Injuries and graduation have some traditional powers like UConn and Baylor on wobblier ground than usual.

So, Iowa could get there! This is a talented team led by one of the best duos in the sport. But we’ve also never seen this current Iowa team get to the Elite Eight, and last year their No. 2 seed translated in an upset against a 10-seed.

Personally, I think this team is well-positioned to get to the Final Four. But we’ll see: Clark’s going to need to return to her 2020-21 efficiency while still showcasing the fearlessness that we saw from her in 2021-22. If that happens, the sky’s the limit. (Or, well…a loss in the Final Four is the limit. Unless they get injury issues, South Carolina and Stanford really feel a tier above the rest of the field.)