Life looks a bit different in Iowa City these days, especially this time of year. Carver-Hawkeye Arena is still filled to the brim for Iowa women’s basketball games, of course. But there’s no No. 22 launching shots from the logo — and there won’t be another No. 22 doing that on that court ever again.
The Hawkeyes will retire Caitlin Clark’s jersey on February 2nd after they play the fourth-ranked USC Trojans, led by JuJu Watkins. The ceremony will take place less than a year after she last wore a Hawkeye jersey, but the Iowa athletic department wanted to plan it as soon as it could fit into Clark’s very busy schedule.
“It’s nice to be able to celebrate somebody in the moment — as close to that moment as you can because you don’t always have that opportunity,” Iowa athletic director Beth Goetz told NBC Sports. “So, we’re doing it quickly here, but it’s also a wonderful homecoming for her and an opportunity for our fan base to get a chance to celebrate her again.”
Clark said in a statement that the school “holds a special place in my heart that is bigger than just basketball” and that “it will be a great feeling to look up in the rafters and see my jersey alongside those that I’ve admired for so long.”
For those who have somehow forgotten her record-breaking exploits, a quick refresher: Clark, the two-time National Player of the Year, is the NCAA’s all-time leader in points (3,951) and the all-time women’s basketball leader in three-pointers made (548). She is the only player in NCAA Division I men’s or women’s basketball history to lead her conference in scoring and assists over four consecutive seasons.
She led the Hawkeyes to back-to-back appearances in the national championship game before being drafted first overall by the Indiana Fever in the 2024 WNBA Draft. She was named Rookie of the Year and made the All-WNBA First Team while breaking the rookie scoring record and setting single-season and single-game WNBA records for assists.
“It was the ride of a lifetime,” said first-year Iowa head coach Jan Jensen, who worked as a Hawkeye assistant coach under Lisa Bluder for nearly the past quarter-century. “We worked like crazy to recruit her, and we got to be the last one standing. I will forever believe that it was the perfect match — the perfect staff and kid in a state that loves its female sports.
“If you know Michael Jordan, you know he went to Carolina. He’s still Carolina blue, right? Forever. I feel really fortunate that Caitlin will forever be black and gold. She’ll always be part of our story here.”
Clark will join Megan Gustafson (No. 10) and Michelle Edwards (No. 30) as the only Iowa women’s basketball players to have their numbers retired. And it’ll certainly be a scene at Carver-Hawkeye on Sunday, with the cheapest tickets to the game going for $135 apiece, per SeatGeek. It will be, in many ways, a singular moment that highlights the past, present and the future of this program.
“With time, that appreciation (for Clark) grows — if that’s even possible — because you start to see how deeply it penetrated, certainly in our own community but now watching the level of impact she’s having on the game of basketball throughout the world,” Goetz said.
Goetz said she was surprised that season tickets for the Iowa women sold out before the start of the season. She thought there might be some fans who jumped on board to see Clark but would hop off now that she’s gone. But the sustained support and interest in the program is one example of the phenomenon dubbed the Clark Effect, which describes the financial impact Clark has had first on college basketball, then the WNBA (in both home and away games). Or, as Jensen put it: “Beatle mania.”
But time does have a tendency to pass. And the Iowa women’s basketball program is now living life after Clark.
These Hawkeyes are 14-7 on the season, sub.-.500 in Big Ten play after a brutal five-game losing streak earlier in January (by a combined 24 points). Jensen is now in charge, after the longtime Iowa assistant succeeded Lisa Bluder when she stepped down in May. Bluder took the Hawkeyes to 18 NCAA Tournaments in her 24 years; Iowa went 34-5 last season and 31-7 in 2022-23, its two most successful seasons in program history.
That is undoubtedly a tough act to follow. Iowa didn’t just lose its generational player, it also lost its longtime head coach and a group of veteran players led by one of the program’s greatest leaders ever in Kate Martin. Jensen said she gave herself a mantra the day she took over the program. From this point forward.
“You’re never going to be perfect every day,” Jensen told NBC Sports. “Everything that I’m trying to implement — a lot of the things are the same, but I have to figure out my path. So, I started looking at what had worked. But now I’ve kind of tweaked some of our offensive sets because our defense is a little better. But our offense can sometimes struggle to score over a period of minutes.
“It’s natural, especially when you lose an iconic player and certainly a tremendously iconic head coach, that people can look back and you know they were such a part of the magic of the runs. But even if it all would have stayed the same, my whole premise for this year was, we’ve got next. If you’re playing pickup, you know, ‘We’ve got next.’ I’m trying to keep everybody looking forward.”
Jansen has kept a notebook where she’s tracked things she definitely wants to change, things she doesn’t like and things she personally can do differently. There are also plenty of changes beyond the basketball itself — as college athletics transitions into its revenue-sharing era, which is set to begin this fall and brings with it a number of unknowns. Navigating contracts and agents while players can transfer and play right away elsewhere is a major challenge for any coach, let alone a first-time head coach who is also managing a new staff and the natural ebbs and flows of life in the toughest women’s basketball conference in the country. And Jensen is doing it all in front of a fan base that just experienced back-to-back runs to the national championship game.
“I didn’t really set expectations on this year,” Jensen said. “What I’ve always desired in this particular first season is that you still see that work ethic, you still see, when it’s rolling, that joy. You still see how this team is playing together and playing for this fan base. Unfortunately, we hit that little rough spot in a really hard conference. But I know what that, that locker room is like, and it’s the same as it’s been since the early days.”
That five-game skid was tough on Jensen. Clark and Martin both texted to check in and offer support. Jensen can see the program’s high expectations weigh on her young players. She also sees the burden carried by leading scorer Lucy Olsen, a high-profile transfer guard from Villanova who was never going to fill Clark’s shoes on her own but is constantly compared to her as a scorer, a passer and a press-breaker. Eight of Iowa’s 13 active players were new to the program this year.
“It is a privilege to have the expectations this young group has, but that’s real — and we hear that from our fans the first time you take a loss, or it doesn’t look exactly the same — and it was never going to look exactly the same again,” Goetz said. “It can be overwhelming. … You have the same naysayers that other premier programs have, when one thing doesn’t go right. It’s a lack of patience. It’s the Ohio State (fans of the football team) who think the sky is falling before they steamroll everybody on the way to a national championship.”
Goetz said she’s impressed by how quickly Jensen has implemented her own tweaks and added her unique touches to the program as a head coach, building off of a foundation she helped build alongside Bluder. Both women know that the expectation is to be participating in the NCAA Tournament on an annual basis and putting together deep runs. Goetz knows you can’t always expect Final Four appearances, but she does think this program can continue to compete toe-to-toe with the best in the country. Recruiting — and landing — top-50 players is a big part of that.
Iowa wants to stay “in line” with some of the most historic and consistent programs in women’s basketball, like Tennessee and Ohio State, Goetz said. UConn and South Carolina are kind of in their own stratosphere — the current championship-level tier, if you will — but it’s important to Goetz and Jensen that the Hawkeyes are in the group of schools that are consistently relevant and successful while remaining committed to the sport at the highest level. And they believe Iowa should be able to do just that in the coming years.
“It’s a lot easier to lead when it’s always sunny and it’s rolling,” Jensen said. “But I’ve long understood and felt that leadership has its greatest impact when it’s raining sideways. So, when we hit that patch, I just always felt that we were closer (to the top teams) than farther from them.
“The key is that you have to stay steady through it all, and that’s what I believe that I’ve been able to do. … I knew this job would be amazing and fun and hard. It would be hard because we had to replace so much. There’s just always time it takes to put the next era together.”
