COLLEGE PARK — It requires near perfection to topple the giant that is Iowa women’s basketball. Caitlin Clark scored 38 points, the fourth-highest total of her spectacular season, and yet Maryland almost completed the daunting task.
Every Terps offensive outburst was followed by a show of dominance from Clark to maintain her team’s thin lead. The game entered its final minutes almost even as both sides traded 3-pointers, each drawing a larger roar from the Xfinity Center’s sellout crowd.
With 40 seconds left and her third-ranked team up six, Clark helped put the punctuation on another standout performance with a move she’d finished several times Saturday night. She darted around a defender and dished to a teammate, who found an open Hawkeye for a corner three that put the finishing touches on an eventual 93-85 win.
“This game felt like March,” Maryland coach Brenda Frese said. “We made Caitlin work for everything.”
As easily as Clark drew Maryland women’s basketball’s largest crowd in seven seasons, she hushed it with an assortment of moves that displayed why she’s the sport’s most transcendent figure who many of the announced 17,950 in attendance were there to see.
They wore red and white. They cheered for the Terps. But they were there to see the opponent.
“People spend a lot of time, money and resources to come see us play,” Clark said. “Whenever I step on the court, I just want to have a lot of fun. I’ve been able to find a lot of joy and calmness in that. I don’t get nervous for these games.”
The last Xfinity Center sellout for a women’s game was a product of the teams. It was a clash between two unbeatens: the No. 4 Terps against the reigning national champions and top-ranked UConn.
Saturday’s game featured no such stakes. Maryland (12-10, 4-7 Big Ten) has now lost four games in a row and is in danger of missing the NCAA Tournament for just the third time in coach Brenda Frese’s 21-year tenure. It was instead filled with expectations of witnessing a performance that should be rare, yet has become standard for Clark.
She opened the game with 14 points in the first quarter, making 4 of 5 attempts from 3-point range to give Iowa (21-2, 10-1) a sizable lead. She exited briefly with an apparent injury in the second quarter, then returned and sparked a quick surge that put the Hawkeyes up double digits.
Clark’s 23 first-half points sent Maryland into halftime down 14, a deficit it erased in the third quarter with a 23-3 run. But similar to the Terps’ sizzling start to open the game, Clark extinguished it and held them at bay despite their best efforts to fight back.
“Caitlin did natural Caitlin things, which are spectacular,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said.
Jakia Brown-Turner scored a career-high 25 points, becoming the first Terp to score 20 or more in five straight games since Shatori Walker-Kimbrough in 2017. Bri McDaniel had 22 points, Shyanne Sellers returned from a knee injury to record 14 points, seven assists and six rebounds and Brinae Alexander hit four 3-pointers for her 12 points. It wasn’t enough.
Clark, who’s on pace to become women’s college basketball’s all-time leading scorer, entered Saturday leading the nation with 32.1 points per game. The difference between her and second place is the same as the gap between second and 28th. She also leads the country in assists and 3-point attempts by similar margins.
She’s nailed buzzer-beating, game-winning shots from midcourt, eclipsed 40 points nearly a dozen times in her career and tallied four triple-doubles this season. Only four other players have more than one.
But maybe no other marks better show her mountainous impact than the magnetic force that follows her everywhere she goes.
Every Iowa true road game this season has been a sellout. Saturday’s contest has been sold out since December. Tickets on resale markets went for as high as $400. A seat for Maryland’s next home game costs $15.
“I’ve never seen that many people in a gym,” Brown-Turner said.
Winning in College Park was one of the few hurdles Clark had yet to clear. She was 0-2 at Xfinity Center entering Saturday, and Maryland had won four of the previous six matchups dating to her freshman season. Iowa hadn’t beaten the Terps in College Park since Maryland joined the Big Ten, a feat it can now finally check off.
Last year’s matchup ended in a dominant 96-68 victory for then-No. 7 Maryland in which the Terps held Clark to just 18 points on 5-for-13 shooting, totals she eclipsed in the first half Saturday. After that game, Bluder said the announced attendance of 9,065 was “one of the smallest crowds we’ve went against.”
Saturday was Bluder and, more importantly, Clark’s first time back since then. This time, against a Maryland team experiencing a rare down year, the star brought a crowd nearly double in size and did what she’s done with ease for the past four years: put on a display well worth the cost to see it.
“I take it in everywhere I go,” Clark said. “It’s changed my life.”
Maryland at Rutgers
Tuesday, 8:30 p.m.
TV: Big Ten Network