Caitlin Clark Has Come Long Way Since Title Game Loss To LSU, Becoming The Taylor Swift Of College Basketball

Remember when Angel Reese was the Barbenheimer of the college basketball world and beyond?

She led No. 9 LSU to its first national championship in basketball with a 102-85 win over Caitlin Clark and No. 2 Iowa last April 2 in Dallas. Reese taunted Clark at close range by holding up her ring finger where that title jewelry would go - even for several seconds after the game ended.

LSU's Angel Reese taunts Iowa's Caitlin Clark after LSU beat Iowa for the national title last season at Final Four in Dallas. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

Watch any national championship, Super Bowl, World Series or NBA title celebration, and the players almost always immediately celebrate among themselves - turning away from opponents. Clark regularly taunts, too, particularly after 3-pointers, but during the game and usually from a distance. She left that arena quietly defeated, but it was the calm before the storm.

LSU star forward Angel Reese posed for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition last year. (Getty Images)

Meanwhile, Reese, LSU's "Bayou Barbie," became a summer blockbuster. She waltzed on as the poster face of Name, Image & Likeness in women's college basketball, posing for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, among a host of other NIL endorsements that totaled $1.7 million entering this season. Clark's NIL packages are estimated at just $910,000, but she has more game and is expected to be the No. 1 WNBA draft pick in April after declaring on Thursday. Reese has been projected to go as high as sixth overall, or as low as 11th. 

Bayou Barbie? Cool nickname, particularly with the Barbie movie coming out last summer. But isn't that kind of regional? 

Caitlin Clark Has Become The Taylor Swift Of Sports

Since that loss to LSU and once this season started, Clark has become the "American Woman" of sports from sea to shining sea, not to mention Big Ten arenas across the Midwest. In fact, other than mega singer/songwriter superstar Taylor Swift, who attended NFL games regularly last season, Clark may be the national "It Girl" in or out of sports. 

"Taylor Swift Who? We have Caitlin Clark" screamed a sign at Iowa's jam-packed win at Nebraska on Feb. 11.

Reese, a senior forward, also remains one of the finest players in college basketball for the second straight year. She is second in the nation in rebounding with 13 a game and is averaging 19 points for No. 9 LSU (25-4, 12-3 SEC). But Reese has not made Caitlin-size headlines since her well-publicized, four-game suspension and return last November, which was nothing more than a timeout.  

Caitlin Clark leads the nation in scoring and assists this season with 32.2 points and 8.7 assists a game. (Getty Images). 

Clark, meanwhile, has become one of the most iconic figures in college basketball since Pistol Pete Maravich, the "Bayou Ballhandler," if you will. Maravich, who died in 1988 of an undetected heart defect at age 40, became a cultural phenomenon nationally at LSU. Like Clark, he filled opposing arenas and switched allegiances across the South from 1967-70 before a spectacular NBA career.

On Sunday at 1 p.m. on FOX, in yet another nationally televised game featuring "The Caitlin Show," Clark will likely break the NCAA Division I college basketball career scoring record held by Maravich for 54 years at 3,667 points. She just needs to put up 18 points. She is averaging 32.2 a game.

The late, great Pete Maravich has a 17-point lead over Iowa's Caitlin Clark as the NCAA's all-time leading scorer with 3,667 points from 1967-70. Clark will go for the record at 1 p.m. Sunday at home on FOX vs. No. 2 Ohio State (Getty Images). 

No. 6 Iowa (25-4, 14-3 Big Ten) closes the regular season Sunday at home against No. 2 Ohio State (25-3, 16-1 Big Ten), which beat Iowa, 100-92, on Jan. 21 in Columbus. Clark scored 45 in that game with seven 3-pointers. Tickets for the game at 14,998-seat Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City are going for as much as $5,199, according to Vivid Seats.

Maravich averaged 44.2 points a game at LSU over 83 games and three seasons. The 771 points he scored as a freshman in the 1966-67 season do not count toward his 3,667 total, because freshmen were not eligible for varsity at that time. And the 3-point shot did not come to the NCAA until the 1986-87 season. Maravich regularly shot from beyond 3-point range without realizing it. Studies of LSU box scores when Maravich played estimated he would have made more than 10 3-pointers a game and averaged 57 points a game, which would have given him a likely unreachable total of 4,731 points in three seasons.

Caitlin Clark Is 17 Points Behind Pete Maravich 

Clark has scored 3,650 points and averaged 28.3 points a game with the 3-pointer through 129 games over four seasons. Yes, they are different records. But in the 54 years since Maravich last played at LSU, Clark is only the second male or female player to come this close.

And at least Clark has done it in just four seasons against the very best competition for one of the elite teams in the nation for the third straight year, and one that has advanced in all three NCAA Tournaments with Clark. Last season, Detroit Mercy's Antoine Davis missed tying Maravich's record by three points in his fifth season through 144 games in the lower tier Horizon League. His team finished 14-19 last year, and even the College Basketball Invitational tournament passed.

And like Maravich, Clark is not just a scorer. She leads the nation in scoring (32.2 points a game), assists (8.7 a game), 3-pointers (5.38 a game) and triple-doubles (6). She averages 7.4 rebounds a game.

"Caitlin is the most exciting college player today - men or women," Hall of Fame basketball announcer Dick Vitale told OutKick Friday, while marketing his new book "Until My Last Breath: Fighting Cancer With My Young Heroes." 

"Like Pete, Caitlin can create shot opportunities due to her incredible ball handling skills to get open," Vitale said. "When watching Pistol, it was like going to a concert."

Caitlin Clark will play her last home game at Iowa on Sunday against Ohio State. (Getty Images).

Clark's home and road games have had that same feel as fans have lined up around various arenas. But that all ends this season as far as the college game.

Caitlin Clark Will Turn Pro After This Season

Clark announced Thursday that she will skip her COVID fifth season to enter the WNBA Draft on April 15 in Brooklyn. The Indiana Fever is expected to take her with the first pick.

Contrary to some reports, she is expected to make more money in the WNBA through various new endorsement deals and her current NIL packages are expected to continue in the WNBA, if not rise in value. If Clark puts fans in the seats and more TV eyes on the WNBA, her endorsements will dwarf the $76,535 WNBA salary that will go to the top four picks.

"There's never been anybody like Caitlin Clark in women's sports," Mary Jo Kane, a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota who specialized in women's sports research and media coverage, told OutKick on Wednesday. Then she watched Clark score 33 points with 12 assists and 10 rebounds in a 108-60 win at Minnesota that night. Clark broke Kansas' Lynette Woodard's pre-NCAA scoring record of 3,649 points set from 1977-81 in the process.    

"She's like a gazelle," Kane said after the game. "The second she gets the ball, she's pushing it. A superior athlete. I was literally on the edge of my seat the whole game, and we lost by 48. It was 70 percent Minnesota fans, but it felt like a love fest for Caitlin. It was beyond thrilling to witness." 

Kane said if she was still teaching, she would devote an entire course just to Caitlin Clark.

Caitlin-omics Is Taking Over

"No one has been able to capture lightning in a bottle or the magic the way Caitlin Clark has," she said. "She is a tsunami of impact and influence - marketing phenom, economic impact, role model. She's off the charts. She's literally changed the game with her Caitlin-omics."

Clark is the first college athlete - man or woman - to sign with State Farm. Watch her commercial with Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler and former Indiana legend Reggie Miller during the Ohio State game Sunday.

"State Farm is the behemoth," Kane said. "They have all the players. That shows just how far women's sports have come. She is the face of college basketball."

Clark also has NIL deals with such major brands as H&R Block, Buick and Nike.

"There is no male star on her level right now as far as star power," Kane said. "And the thing about her is she usually comes through on the biggest stages when the lights are brightest. She wants the ball, and she delivers."

Rarely does she even appear shaken. Even with Angel Reese's ring finger in her face, she was down, but calmly just walked away.

Now, bring on Pete Maravich and Ohio State. 

Iowa's Caitlin Clark has been called "Ponytail Pete" in reference to Pete Maravich (right). (Getty Images).

"I think staying calm," Clark said when asked about her approach to the Maravich record Wednesday after the win at Minnesota on Peacock. "Ohio State has quite a few seniors that have been in these moments. They're not going to be intimidated by any environment."

Nor is Clark.

"When you get on the court, you get into a mindset of, ‘This is my moment,’" she said in a recent FOX interview. "But when my light shines, it shines on every single person on this team. I wouldn't be who I am without them letting me be me."

And that will probably mean her patented, logo 3-pointer when she needs one bucket for the record.

"You all knew I was going to shoot a logo three for the record," Clark said after breaking Kelsey Plum's NCAA scoring record of 3,527 on Feb. 15 with a 3-pointer at the Hawkeye before finishing with a career-high 49. "C'mon now."

Reese is even sold on Clark now. After Clark broke Plum's record, Reese didn't taunt. She tweeted with tremendous class.

Clark has already envisioned how things might go Sunday.

"You know, when I make a couple shots, the crowd gets super loud," she said in a recent interview. "And you kind of feel like you're on top of the world."

It's Caitlin Clark's world right now.

By a tsunami over all comers and taunters.