Iowa women’s basketball’s Final Four game vs. UConn on Friday is more than just an opportunity to advance to the national championship game two days later.
It will be a matchup featuring two of college basketball’s brightest and most recognizable stars: Caitlin Clark of the Hawkeyes, and Paige Bueckers of the Huskies.
Clark is the two-time national player of the year and the all-time Division I career scoring leader, men’s or women’s, while Bueckers is a first-team all-American who was the national player of the year three years ago, in 2021.
While Clark has become a transformative figure in the sport, there’s at least one prominent national media figure who thinks Bueckers might be better.
As part of a panel on ESPN’s Thursday episode of “First Take” — which discussed whether a national championship this year would make Clark the greatest women’s college player of all time — host Molly Qerim said Clark is “lucky” that UConn isn’t fully healthy going into the Final Four before turning her attention to Bueckers.
“If Paige Bueckers didn’t basically miss two seasons, I don’t know if we’d be talking about Caitlin Clark the way we are right now,” Qerim said.
