Jay Williams Believes Caitlin Clark Is Not 'Great' Until She Wins A Title

Iowa Hawkeyes guard Caitlin Clark is hands down the best female college basketball player in the nation, and everyone else is competing for second place.

She can shoot from anywhere, score in any way, against whoever she plays against. Clark is one of the sport’s most transcendent players at any level, on the men’s or women’s side.

Oh, she also happens to be the all-time leading scorer in women’s college basketball as of Thursday night. She passed Kelsey Plum’s mark of 3,527 points with a three-pointer from just beyond the logo against Michigan.

At the rate she’s going, she could pass Pete Maravich’s record and become the highest scoring college basketball player ever. By all accounts, Clark has reached greatness on this level of competition.

But ESPN’s Jay Williams wouldn’t say that, not yet anyway.

During today’s edition of College GameDay, Williams said that he doesn’t consider players great until they do one very specific thing,

"I think she’s the most prolific scorer the game has ever seen. I hold great, or the levels of immortality or the pantheon, to when you win championships," Williams said. "I’m not saying that she’s not at a high, high, high level, but for it to go to the state of immortality — in my opinion — it has to culminate with your team winning a championship."

Jay Williams Set A Nonsensical Standard For Determining If Players Are Great

I will give Williams a little bit of credit for at least setting a definable metric for how he determines greatness. Most commentators set arbitrary standards by which they judge talent, or at the very least inconsistent ones.

But that doesn’t mean Williams’ standard makes sense.

Players achieve greatness by being consistently amazing over a long period of time. If you reach the point where you have a legitimate chance of becoming the highest scoring college basketball player in history, you’ve earned the "great" label and will be remembered for quite some time.

Furthermore, neither Plum nor Maravich won a title in their collegiate careers, yet set the scoring marks for their respective sides of the game. Professional stars like Dan Marino, Calvin Johnson, Ted Williams, Allen Iverson, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, and Charles Barkley also didn’t take home their sports' championship hardware. 

I’m sure Williams wouldn’t hesitate to call some - if not all - of these players great. So why is Clark any different?

Does winning a title improve your standing within the history of your sport or help? Most definitely. But it doesn’t take away from what you do individually. Titles should not have been Williams’ standard when assessing Clark’s career.