Caitlin Clark mastered her mental game and that has Iowa in the title game
CLEVELAND — Iowa probably doesn’t make this national championship game earlier in Caitlin Clark’s career.
When the Hawkeyes’ offense was struggling against UConn on Friday night, when none of Clark’s shots were falling, when the Huskies were bodying the Iowa players from the moment they inbounded the ball, Clark could easily have gotten frustrated. Would easily have gotten frustrated in seasons past.
Instead, she stayed almost preternaturally calm. She didn’t throw up her hands or roll her eyes. She didn’t bite when UConn tried to bait her into losing her cool. She was calm when she did talk to the refs. She recognized that UConn locking her down was opening things up for Hannah Stuelke and fed the sophomore inside. Continuously.
Impressive as those logo 3s and her scoring average are, it’s Clark’s maturity that has brought the Hawkeyes within one game of winning it all. And she and everyone else at Iowa agree it’s that part of her game that’s come the furthest these last four seasons.
“That doesn’t come without work. She’s put in a lot of work to the mental side of her game,” Kate Martin, who has played with Clark all four years, said Saturday. “That just shows how good of a teammate she is. She wanted to be better. She has all the basketball skills that she needs. She’s the best player in the country. But to work on the mental side, you can always get better on that.
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“She’s a fiery passionate player, which is what we need and what we want on our team. That just elevates everybody else on our team,” Martin continued. “But for her to be staying so level-headed and so poised in these last few games has been tremendous and I’m really proud of her. Because we need it. When we see that she’s calm and not frazzled, then that keeps the rest of us calm, too.”
It’s a truism of the most exceptional athletes that they often don’t understand how unique their talents are. They simply can’t comprehend why their teammates can’t do what they do or what they’re asking. It’s why so many fail as coaches or general managers. (Cough, Michael Jordan, cough.) They expect everyone to be like them, and no one is.
Clark acknowledges that, saying Saturday that earlier in her career she felt as if she had to be perfect. That she had to do everything herself because if she didn’t, then who would? Who could?
But basketball is not an individual sport. Transcendent as she is, she cannot win games on her own. So she’s had to learn. To adapt. To have the humility to recognize frustration is a self-indulgent luxury that only serves to hold her, and Iowa, back.
“My teammates ride my emotions whether I like it or not, whether it's positive or whether it's negative. That's something I've had to learn,” Clark said Saturday. “It's something I've embraced and it's a powerful tool, like you saw. The things I can say about my teammates and truly believe and instill that confidence in them, that's one of the coolest things as a point guard, as a leader, as a friend, as a teammate, how much better you can make people by just believing in them and telling that to them, to their face.”
Clark is human, so she still has her moments. She was visibly frustrated in the second-round game against West Virginia, a defensive juggernaut that harassed her into bad shots and didn’t give Iowa much else.
She recognizes now, however, that if an opponent gets in her head and takes her out of her game, it takes Iowa out of its game, too. She could not stew on things as she might have as a freshman or a sophomore if she and Iowa were to have any chance at winning the national title.
Especially the deeper into the tournament Iowa has gone.
That Clark is able to do this when the stakes are highest speaks volumes about her growth. She knows all eyes are on her. She knows any frustration she shows will be turned into a meme before the game is over. So she doesn’t engage, focusing her energies instead on what she can do better, how she can make her teammates better.
“I think she is playing unbelievable in this tournament,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said. “She's keeping her composure extremely well, still playing with that fire and that passion and that joy but, at the same time, not letting other people kind of get into her head or anything like that.
“We always talk about, like every coach does, controlling the controllables,” Bluder added. “She's learning and has learned that over the course of this year really, really well.”
If Iowa wins the national title, it will be because of Clark’s prodigious talent. But it also will be because of her leadership and maturity, which have become every bit as impressive as her scoring ability.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Caitlin Clark mastered her mental game. That has Iowa in title game
