Paige Bueckers is this year’s Caitlin Clark, as her 44-point game Wednesday attested

She isn’t there yet in terms of endorsement deals and putting bodies in seats when her team is playing on the road, but Paige Bueckers is this year’s Caitlin Clark.

Bueckers, the rookie guard from national-champion Connecticut, is having a sensational season for a not-so-sensational Dallas Wings team. Wednesday, she tied a WNBA rookie-record with 44 points in the Wings’ 81-80 loss to the Los Angeles Sparks. It’s the most points anyone in the league has scored this season, and it’s the most by a rookie since Cynthia Cooper-Dyke scored 44 in a 1997 game.

Bueckers made 17 of 21 shots from the field, making all four of her 3-point tries. She has made 47.4 percent of her shots this season. Clark shot 41.7 percent last year, which was better than current WNBA stars and Olympians Kelsey Plum and Sabrina Ionescu shot as rookies.

Plum, by the way, banked in a last-second jumper to beat Dallas Wednesday.

Like Clark in 2024, Bueckers was this year’s No. 1 draft choice. Like Clark in 2024, there are reasons Bueckers’ team had the first pick. It’s 9-27 this season with four games left.

Nonetheless, Bueckers is fifth in the league in scoring with 19.7 points per game, and she averages 5.3 assists, and has 153 assists to just 61 turnovers. Last season, Clark averaged 19.2 points and a league-high 8.4 assists for the 20-20 Indiana Fever.

Clark’s 2025 season has been interrupted by injuries. She has missed Indiana’s last 13 games with a prolonged groin injury, and has only played in 13 of the Fever’s 35 contests. Whether she returns this season is a question no one has yet to answer, quite possibly because no one knows.

Her team has been beset by other health woes, the latest a season-ending knee injury to guard Sophie Cunningham. Yet, Indiana has the league’s sixth-best record at 19-16 with five games to play, with work left to do to clinch a top-8 finish and a playoff berth.

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