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Caitlin Clark, Hawkeye teammates, and 55,646 fans have Kinnick lovefest
Iowa nearly doubles the women’s basketball attendance record, and a great time was had by all as Clark and her teammates did what they do, win
Oct. 15, 2023 6:21 pm, Updated: Oct. 15, 2023 11:08 pm
IOWA CITY — This thing Sunday afternoon in Kinnick Stadium that had “Can you believe this?” rolling off 55,646 tongues was ridiculously big in concept yet remarkably personal in execution.
Having a college basketball team play an exhibition game in an open-air coliseum on a chilly, windy, overcast Sunday afternoon in mid-October would have been brazen and bizarre anywhere else. For the Iowa women to do it here, this year, was perfect.
Lisa Bluder’s coaching ability has been in plain sight for a quarter-century at Iowa, and before that at St. Ambrose and Drake. But who knew she was such a savvy promoter and entrepreneur?
Bluder went to then-Iowa deputy athletics director Beth Goetz a week after the Hawkeyes were home from their national-championship game appearance in April, and suggested this event.
“She said ‘Hey, I think we can do this,’ recalled Goetz, now the interim AD. Goetz added a big win to her profile Sunday with the successful way this event was carried out.
“You have an idea, and it could fall flat if nobody shows up,” Bluder said after her team’s 94-72 win over DePaul. “But man, Hawk fans showed up today.”
Just enough to nearly double the former women’s basketball attendance record, that’s all.
Was there ever a doubt? The rewarded love Hawkeye fans, women’s basketball fans, sports fans, young fans, old fans, and fans of fun get from Bluder’s team was given a way to express itself Sunday.
Not everyone can come to the regular-season games in Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Besides the team selling out for the season for the first time in program history, attending regular-season games isn’t always easy for those who would go if given the chance.
Iowa shares Caitlin Clark with the nation, and it’s more than Iowans who have become captivated and delighted by the 2023 National Player of the Year. Many a fan among Sunday’s 55K was from out-of-state, and many of them were kids whose parents loaded up the SUV for a family weekend trip to Iowa City.
Clark could make a pied piper follow her with her basketball bag of tricks and the way she embraces fans rather than keeping them at a distance. Her 100-yard walk after the game from the basketball court at the north end of the stadium to the tunnel at the other end passed hordes of fans in the front rows of the grandstand.
They, mostly girls and boys, just wanted a one-second high-five from Clark. She gave hundreds of them. The result was hundreds of beaming kids’ faces.
That, as much as dropping 41 points on No. 1 South Carolina in a national semifinal six months ago, was winning.
All the usual Kinnick rituals were in place, the Swarm and the Wave, the I-O-W-A chant that lasted a near-eternity, the band playing “In Heaven There Is No Beer.”
So were the crowd roars, though they had a higher pitch than the football fans produce because of all the youth in the stands.
Clark made just 3 of 9 3-pointers in the 15 mph breeze, and just 5 of 10 free throws, one of them a wind-grabbed airball. If you see her airball a foul shot indoors this winter, you will have just witnessed the onset of total Armageddon.
But Clark was still Clark through and through Sunday, as 34 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists attest. A graphic on BTN jokingly noted it was the first triple-double in Kinnick history. But for the Hawkeyes, it was one of the few things this day that was old hat.
Iowa’s players were grinning in the jump ball circle moments before tipoff. Their fans were doing so during tailgating, pregame warm-ups, the game, and the ride home.
“The amount of people screaming for us, it just kind of takes your breath away for a moment,” Clark said.
“Well, that was a little bit of fun,” Bluder said as she opened her postgame press conference.
“It was like a dream. It really was. It was just fabulous.
“When I first started, I probably played in front of 55 people. Now we’re playing in front of 55,000. So we have come a way.”
It was an exhibition game and doesn’t count in the standings. But for Hawkeyes women’s basketball and its fans, this goes into the books as a victory and will forever remain one.
Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com
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