Guard Caitlin Clark’s historic career in women’s college basketball ended on Sunday afternoon, as her Iowa Hawkeyes fell to the South Carolina Gamecocks, 87-75, in the women’s national championship game at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ohio.

Clark scored 30 points, but it was no match for a much deeper South Carolina squad that finished 38-0 on the season.

It was the second year in a row that Clark and the Hawkeyes lost in the national finals, as Angel Reese and the LSU Tigers took home the prize last year.

Clark, who has declared for the WNBA Draft, leaves women’s college basketball as its all-time scoring leader with 3,951 points and has undoubtedly caused the recent rise in popularity in the sport. Iowa’s controversial win over UConn in the national semifinals on Friday night drew a record 14.2 million viewers for ESPN and ESPN2. The previous record was set just days earlier when 12.3 million people tuned in to see Clark and the Hawkeyes defeat LSU in the Elite Eight.

Clark is most known for her three-point shot, and that’s not only because she made a record 548 of them at Iowa, but also because of her ability to make them from the edge of the Hawkeyes’ logo on a regular basis.

So Clark is going to the WNBA, and she might even play eight games a season in Ice Cube’s BIG3 league.

That is if she’ll accept the rap icon’s offer of $5 million.

Unlike the WNBA, the BIG3 is, well, three-on-three basketball, so Clark technically could be called a two-sport athlete, a la Bo Jackson and Neon Deion Sanders. Probably not, but I’ll bet someone will make that argument if Clark tries it. There will be plenty of arguments about Clark before and after she enters the WNBA. Why do I say that? Because there have already been plenty of them about Clark throughout her college basketball career.

WNBA veterans aren’t exactly rolling out the red carpet for Clark, and many of them appear to be offended by her status as a transformative phenom. Las Vegas Ace star Kelsey Plum, whose scoring record Clark broke this season, was critical of Clark’s ability to shoot lengthy three-pointers against grown women in the WNBA. Legend Sheryl Swoopes recently said that Clark’s scoring record shouldn’t be legitimate because she played one year longer in college than Plum. (They both played four years of college ball and the same amount of games despite Clark getting an extra year of eligibility due to the pandemic.)

The WNBA’s Lexie Brown was recently critical of Ice Cube and his lucrative offer to Clark.

Kansas legend Lynnette Woodard, who was the unrecognized women’s all-time leading scorer with 3,649 points (Woodard’s career, which spanned from 1977-1981, pre-dated the NCAA’s sponsorship of women’s sports) before Clark surpassed her in February, came under some scrutiny recently for comments she made about Clark’s record while speaking at the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association convention:  “I don’t think my record has been broken, Woodard said. “Because you can’t duplicate what you’re not duplicating.”

Woodard cited the fact that she played before the three-point era and also that she shot with a men’s basketball.

Woodard later tried to clarify what she meant, but it seemed like she was speaking openly and honestly while in the moment.

Clark also came under fire by the gatekeepers of men’s college basketball when she became the all-time leading scorer on both the men’s and women’s sides this season. Was it necessary to recognize Clark as being the sport’s all-time leading scorer? Maybe. Maybe not. But it certainly wasn’t her fault.

Like I said, plenty of people have strong feelings about Clark, both good and bad.

And that’s good for women’s basketball.

Some have called Clark the Tiger Woods of women’s college basketball, but unlike Woods, who spent years dominating golf as the sport’s best and most recognized player, I believe Clark has helped to place the spotlight on women’s college basketball as a whole. People are coming out in support of the game’s other stars–including UConn’s Paige Bueckers and USC’s JuJu Watkins. Sure, they’re doing so as a means to throw some shade Clark’s way, but I now know who those players are and am intrigued by their talents.

In addition to Reese, I would have known nothing about Bueckers and Watkins without Clark’s influence on the sport of women’s college basketball.

We have to be honest about something when talking about why Clark is such a polarizing presence, and that has to do with race. We can deny that the elephant in the room exists, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.

And that’s okay.

There is no question that race played a huge role in the 1980s NBA rivalry involving the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics. The headliners in this rivalry were Magic Johnson, a black player, and Larry Bird, a white player. The Lakers’ roster was predominantly black, while the Celtics’ roster, including the most high-profile players, was white.

Los Angeles was Showtime. It was glitz and glamor. It was Hollywood. Boston was blue-collar. It was working class. Furthermore, the city spent most of the 1960s and 1970s dealing with racial tensions. The Celtics, who had won 13 NBA titles between 1957 and 1976, rarely sold out the old Boston Garden. They often played third fiddle to the Red Sox and Bruins, despite neither winning nearly as many titles (the Red Sox hadn’t won a World Series since 1903). Race–the fact that NBA teams were made up of mostly black players–was seen as one of the biggest reasons for the lack of interest in the Celtics in Boston.

Regardless of what one may believe, it was a fact that the NBA wasn’t very popular by the late-’70s. In fact, the NBA Final was often shown on tape delay.

Magic and Bird, who came of age during this time, changed all of that, and the league was as popular as ever by the mid-’80s. It was a sad commentary on the times, but one can’t deny the impact that both players had on the sport of basketball in this country.

It was East Coast vs. West Coast, but it ran a lot deeper than that. 

Clark, who is white, is going to quickly become the new face of the WNBA, and there are a lot of people who are going to want to see her succeed and maybe even just as many who are going to want to see her fail because of her race.

It’s a sad commentary on the times, but it’s hard to deny.

But beyond that, Clark is going to enter the WNBA as a phenom, and sports history is filled with young phenoms who threatened the establishment. The veterans of the league did not want to buy the hype. True, sports history is also filled with stories of young phenoms who quickly flamed out, but there are plenty of examples of young superstars who took their leagues to greater heights than ever–Bird and Magic certainly come to mind.

Clark also comes along during the golden era (or some might say, the ugly era) of social media. In addition to actual experts in every field, social media is dominated by Joe and Joy Schmoes who are arrogant enough to think their opinions have just as much weight.

Many of the social media influencers in the basketball world–both the experts and the Schmoes–are going to stake their reputations on Clark either succeeding or failing at the professional level.

Caitlin Clark is going to make the WNBA Must See TV and one of the hottest tickets in all of sports the second she is drafted.

If she quickly dominates, she just might take the league to heights it has never seen before.