Caitlin Clark stars as Iowa ousts Dawn Staley’s South Carolina in Final Four game for the ages

DALLAS — It was a highly anticipated Final Four matchup that turned into a special game, and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark made it her own.

Clark scored 41 points in Iowa’s stunning 77-73 win over undefeated, top seed, nationally ranked No. 1 and defending national champion South Carolina. The Gamecocks’ 42-game winning streak is over, and the Hawkeyes will seek the first national title in program history against No. 3 seed LSU in the championship game on Sunday (3:30 p.m., 6abc).

Clark, a first-team All-American, scored or assisted on all of Iowa’s 18 fourth-quarter points, polishing off her historic night with four free throws in the closing seconds.

“She just elevates everyone around you,” said McKenna Warnock, who snagged a key offensive rebound in the final seconds. “Even I find myself just standing in awe watching her every single day. It’s just so fun and so amazing for women’s basketball in general and [the] Iowa Hawkeyes.”

Clark, the nation’s third-leading scorer with 27.3 points per game, is quick to point to her teammates’ accomplishments and even those of her opponents, even as All-America accolades come pouring in and player of the year awards pile up. She offered effusive praise of Dawn Staley’s South Carolina squad following a showdown she called “a tremendous game for women’s basketball.”

» READ MORE: Dawn Staley knows how far women’s basketball has come

“I think just tonight showed how fun women’s basketball is,” she said. “Two really great teams that went at it. I’m sure so many people wish this was a series of seven games. That would be really, really fun. … But, obviously, we’d get outrebounded by quite a bit, but we didn’t hang our heads. That’s all you could do. We gave up some [offensive] boards. We fouled when we didn’t need to. We just came together and said, ‘Next-play mentality,’ and that’s all you can do, really.”

Clark and the Hawkeyes fended off every salvo from a South Carolina team that hadn’t lost a game in over a year, a game that featured sensational talent Aliyah Boston — someone Clark called “tremendous.”

“I think she’s the most phenomenal basketball player in America,” Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder said of Clark, who’s scored at least 40 points four times this season. “I just don’t think there’s anybody like her. In so many regards, not only scoring, but passing the ball, handling the ball. She had the ball in her hands almost all the time tonight against some pretty good defensive players.”

Those players had plenty of nice things to say about Clark, too.

“No, she was on point. I mean, she was everything that we saw on film,” Staley said. “She was everything, like assists, points, turnovers, all of them. She ran the gamut of who she is as a player, and she threaded the needle.”

“I think just tonight showed how fun women’s basketball is. Two really great teams that went at it. I’m sure so many people wish this was a series of seven games.”

Bluder said “it didn’t take a rocket scientist” to see that Clark was a special player in high school, but recruiting her still was a challenge. Bluder and associate head coach Jan Jansen prioritized relationship building with a young Clark, and it worked.

“I think I’m just really, really thankful to be in this position more than anything,” Clark said. “Like Coach Bluder said, probably everybody in America picked South Carolina, deservedly so. They’ve been ranked No. 1 all year. They’ve won 42 straight basketball games. Why wouldn’t you pick them? But at the same time, the people in our locker room believed in us. That’s all you need is a belief in one another, a confidence in one another. We just do it for the person to our left and our right.”

Monika Czinano said Clark is a big part of that fabric.

“It’s so fun to play with her, honestly,” the Hawkeyes’ forward-center said. “Getting to watch that every single day, getting to be a part of it, you can’t make it up. It’s one of the coolest things I’ll ever do in my life.”