Caitlin Clark within reach of Division I basketball scoring records held by Kelsey Plum, Pete Maravich

Iowa point guard Caitlin Clark accomplished something she hadn’t before by winning at rival Iowa State’s Hilton Coliseum for the first time in her career Wednesday.

She also reached another, more notable milestone. She scored her 3,000th career point, a threshold that paves way for the next: the Division I women’s scoring record that’s well within reach. The all-time Division I scoring record is, as well.

Clark became the 15th Division I women’s player to join the 3K club, sitting at 3,013 points after scoring 35 in the 67-58 win. She is 514 points from tying the Div. I women’s scoring record of 3,527 points set by Kelsey Plum, a two-time WNBA champion with the Las Vegas Aces. And she trails LSU legend Pete Maravich’s all-time record of 3,667 points by 654.

The reigning Naismith Award winner is averaging 29.6 points per game during Iowa’s 9-1 start. At that pace, it will take her 17 games to reach the first milestone, which would be Feb. 22 at Indiana. The Hawkeyes have three more regular-season games after that, as well as the Big Ten tournament and NCAA tournament. If Clark followed her career pace of 27.2 ppg, it would take her almost 19 games and could happen Feb. 28 on the road against Minnesota.

Iowa, the 2023 tournament runner-up after losing to LSU in the title game, is the favorite to win the conference and make a deep run into March. That gives Clark a little more room for the record, but she has been such a consistent scorer and high-volume shooter over her career that she might not need it. She’s the second-fastest to 3,000 points (and the fastest in the past 25 years), doing so in 110 games with two-thirds of her senior season left.

She averaged 26.6 points over 30 games as a freshman to lead the country. That season was the only time she scored in single digits in her career, with eight points against Northwestern in her 10th collegiate game. There were only three games in which she scored fewer than 20 points that season.

As a sophomore, she averaged 27 points (first) over 32 games, and during her Naismith season as a junior, she averaged 27.8 (second) over 38 games. She scored fewer than 20 nine times as a sophomore, three times as a junior and none yet as a senior. She has nine games of at least 40 points. And she has more 30-point games than any other Div. I player, men’s or women’s, in history after passing Plum’s record of 38 last month. Her performance against Iowa State was her 41st game of at least 30 points, breaking the tie with Antoine Davis, who played five years for Detroit Mercy and graduated in May.

The Clark career scoring totals: 799, 863 and 1,055 as a career 46.5% shooter. A third of those points have come from beyond the arc, where she’s known to pull up from the logo and drain buckets in transition. The bucket that put her over 3K was classic Clark.

Who will Caitlin Clark pass next?

Clark is 14th on the all-time list and would next pass USC’s Cheryl Miller, who is five points ahead of her, with 3,018 points in 1986. Tennessee star Chamique Holdsclaw is at 3,025 points set in 1999. Clark would almost surely move past them into 11th on Sunday, when Iowa plays at Wisconsin in the Big Ten opener.

She could move into 10th this weekend if she scores more than 26 points. That would push her past UConn legend Maya Moore (3,036) and Delaware’s Elena Delle Donne (3,039). Clark is averaging 22.8 points against the Badgers.

Moore played the second-most games (154) of any player in the top 15. Ashley Joens, who reached 3,060 career points at Iowa State last year, played 158 games in her five-year career and is ninth on the list. Clark currently trails her by 47 points.

The next names:

8. Rachel Banham: 3,093 points, Minnesota 2016
7. Jerica Coley: 3,107 points, FIU 2014
6. Lorri Bauman: 3,115, Drake 1984
5. Patricia Hoskins: 3,122, Mississippi Valley 1989
4. Brittney Griner: 3,283, Baylor 2013
3. Jackie Stiles: 3,393, Missouri State 2001
2. Kelsey Mitchell: 3,402, Ohio State 2018
1. Kelsey Plum: 3,527, Washington 2017

Clark also has the chance to pass Maravich a season after Davis came close to the mark. Maravich scored 3,667 points in a three-year stretch at LSU. He averaged 44.2 points over 83 games. Clark trails his record by 654 points and could break it in the Big Ten tournament if she keeps up a 29.7 ppg average.

Plum's and Maravich’s record marks trail Francis Marion College’s Pearl Moore, who scored 3,884 points in the pre-NCAA era from 1975 to '79. Kansas’ Lynette Woodard scored 3,649 from 1977 to '81. The NCAA did not sponsor women’s basketball until 1982, a decade after Title IX required equal opportunity in athletics.

How Caitlin Clark’s record chase compares to Kelsey Plum's

Plum set the mark behind a career-best senior season at Washington in 2016-17. She averaged 31.7 points (best in Div. I that season) on 20.5 attempts per game. It was the same number of shots as her junior year, when she averaged 25.9 ppg (fourth), but she improved her field-goal percentage from 40.5% to 52.9%.

The four-year starter averaged around 21 points in her freshman and sophomore seasons on 16 attempts per game. With totals of 712, 746 and 960 points, she entered her senior season at 2,418 career points.

Plum passed Stiles when she scored a school-record 57 points in her final regular-season home game. She came into the contest needing 54 points, which she was expected to achieve in the Pac-12 tournament. Mitchell, now an All-Star with the Indiana Fever, came close to Plum’s record in 2018, with 3,402 points over 139 games for Ohio State.

Clark’s 1,055 single-season points in 2022-23 is third all-time behind Plum (1,109 points in 2017) and Stiles (1,062 in 2001), who each did it in 35 games. Clark was also third in single-season 3-pointers with 140, trailing the record of 154 set by Idaho’s Taylor Pierce in 2019. In addition to scoring, Clark’s assists and rebound numbers are also all over the record books.