Thursday night, from Caitlin Clark: A moment to make Iowa fans as proud as peacocks

What can be said about Iowa’s Caitlin Clark that hasn’t already been said in some way?

Darned if I know, so I’ll start a column about her breaking the NCAA women’s basketball all-time career scoring record Thursday night by telling you something about her you may not have heard.

Namely, Clark has the same agent as Taylor Swift.

Last fall, Clark signed with Excel Sports Management. She had already secured several high-profile, high-paying NIL deals. She hooked up with Nike in 2022 and State Farm last year. Then, Gatorade.

Clark also is partnered with Hy-Vee, which once had a future Super Bowl MVP (Kurt Warner) stocking its shelves. Now it has the current one, Patrick Mahomes, joining teammate Travis Kelce in a commercial, trying to sell you its cuts of meat.

Excel is in the stratosphere of sports-management agencies. It represents Tiger Woods, Peyton and Eli Manning, Nikola Jokic.

Alan Zucker joined Excel 10 years ago and brought the Mannings with him along with other notables, including the aforementioned singer/songwriter/musician of some renown.

Zucker is Excel’s head of talent marketing. He and two other Excel agents represent Clark. He has had Swift as a client for 12 years.

OK, so how about Clark breaking Kelsey Plum’s NCAA career scoring record? If you don’t mind, let’s first discuss assists.

Which have made you blurt something out loud while watching Clark: Her 3-point shots from North Liberty or Hills, depending on the direction? Or her passes for teammates’ layups that seemed to go through the eye of a needle to reach their destinations?

The answer, of course, is both.

Clark passed the 1,000-assist mark Sunday in the Hawkeyes’ 82-79 loss at Nebraska and it was a footnote. A thousand assists!

That’s a mere sixth in NCAA women’s history, so maybe it’s not as special to some. But allow me to repeat: A thousand assists!

It’s one thing to be pile up assists by being a pass-first point guard. To lead the nation in scoring and lead the nation in assists? That’s barely possible, yet Clark is doing it for the second time in the last three seasons. (She was second in scoring and first in assists last year, first in scoring and third in assists as a freshman three years ago.)

Oklahoma’s Trae Young is the only NCAA men’s player to finish first in scoring and assists. Young and Tiny Archibald are the only two to do it in the NBA.

Clark’s scoring — and in such quickly assembled bunches — is a hoot, of course. But those seeing-eye passes of hers are things to put in a mental time capsule. They will be missed. Oh yes, they will.

How would you prefer to see Clark’s record-breaking points arrive? Via a bomb from the beak of the Tigerhawk logo? Via a crazy reverse layup of some sort? Via one of her trademark decisive and perfect bank shots that finish a drive down a side of the lane?

Anything but an anticlimactic free throw. Unless it’s one that came after getting fouled on one of the prior options.

By the way, many a basketball person insists the real women’s scoring record is owned by Lynette Woodard, who played at Kansas from 1977-1981 before women’s athletics were governed by the NCAA. The AIAW (Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women) statistics aren’t acknowledged by the NCAA.

Woodard, a Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer who also was an Olympic gold-medalist and a Harlem Globetrotter, scored 3,649 points at Kansas. Clark has 3,520. She’ll pass Woodard soon enough, and that will be that.

But Thursday night is for the NCAA record the nation is acknowledging. Eight more points for 3,528, a stoppage in play, and then many more points. There is a bounce-back game to be won, after all.

This isn’t the kind of moment that has happened in our midst. It’s seldom seen anywhere, for that matter.

Alas, this game is being televised not on the Big Ten’s network or one of Fox’s. Rather, it’s on Peacock and only Peacock.

Streaming services for live sports has become reality, and there will be much more to come. Thursday, though, there may be a few (million) fans out there who have this reaction to Iowa’s game being aired on Peacock:

What a kick in the tail feathers.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com