March Madness: The legend of Iowa's Caitlin Clark grows in epic Final Four victory over juggernaut South Carolina

DALLAS — Every second closer, American Airlines Center roared slightly louder. Two best friends from Iowa clenched their fists against their chins. A young basketball player watched carefully to take moves for her own championship game next week.

Iowa had controlled the game, led for most of it and was minutes from the season’s largest upset. South Carolina came into the Final Four having won 42 straight, a feat celebrated on the arena’s Jumbotron late in the contest when head coach Dawn Staley was announced as Coach of the Year. The Gamecocks were overwhelming favorites to win a second consecutive title. Coaches had been saying, and saying again, no one could beat them.

Iowa can, and did.

The 2023 national championship will crown a first-time winner on Sunday after Iowa knocked out South Carolina, 77-73, in front of a sold-out crowd of 19,288 fans. The Hawkeyes will face LSU, which defeated Virginia Tech in the early game and has also never played in the national championship.

For a game billed so highly and crowned early on as national championship caliber, it lived up to the billing both in competitiveness and atmosphere. It was everything this season deserved and for only the third time in tournament history, a No. 1 seed will not play in the national title game.

The largest lead was nine by Iowa at 7:01 of the third quarter. South Carolina’s largest lead was one early in the fourth before the legend of Caitlin Clark, who swept Player of the Year awards this week, added more pages. She scored Iowa’s final 13 points, and 16 of the final frame’s 18. The other points were off an assist to Monika Czinano.

“I think just tonight showed how fun women's basketball is,” Clark said. “Two really great teams that went at it. I’m sure so many people wish this was a series of seven games. That would be really, really fun.”

It felt unreal, even to the overwhelming majority of fans in black and gold who kept up “Let’s go Hawks” cheers and were ready to erupt if their star hit one of her trademark 3s steps behind the line. Clark did it five times, including one a minute into the fourth to break away from a one-point game. She scored 41 points for a second consecutive night, even though she said afterward she didn’t shoot the best.

Her passing ability was what really shined, finding spots around the length Staley put on her to find a wide-open Czinano, who had 18 points on a 6-of-8 night. As an elevator assistant talking to the TV put it, “You let her do the pick-and-roll easily about 10 times.” And Czinano delivered exquisitely, at one point putting moves on 6-foot-7 Kamilla Cardoso without even putting the ball on the floor (signature Czinano).

“She was the one that put them over the top with her contributions, because we had everybody else in check,” Staley said.

Clark did similarly to the “cheat code” reserve late in the third, driving around Cardoso to push the lead back to four. It felt like a lot when few have been even one point over South Carolina and Iowa had Caitlin Clark.

Lakynn Granger watched from the top of the bottom bowl as Clark cut through defenses, dished out eight assists and pulled down six rebounds. Calvin Granger brought his 12-year-old daughter on a five-hour trip from Orange, Texas, for their first Final Four. After Sunday’s championship game, they’re traveling to Canton, Texas, for her all-star basketball team’s nationals competition.

“I really want to use a bunch of the moves Caitlin and a bunch of the other girls use,” Lakynn, an LSU fan, told Yahoo Sports. “And hopefully I can maybe win it.”

Sitting next to them were two women who have been friends longer than Lakynn has been alive. For Lakynn, watching women’s basketball in a full arena isn’t abnormal. For Tanya Kubicek, 40, and Amanda Roberts, 40, it’s a big deal.

“I think Caitlin Cark being the best that there is right now in women’s — well, all basketball really — I think she gives the younger generation somebody to look up to,” Roberts told Yahoo Sports. “Because we didn’t really have that. I love that she’ll change everything and get our ticket prices up, and attendance up, and all the things.”

Kubicek was born and raised in Iowa and used to live in South Carolina. So when it started to look like Iowa and South Carolina would meet in the Final Four, she told Roberts something the friend “won’t share for media consumption” and they agreed to go. During Iowa’s Elite Eight game, the duo from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, booked tickets for a girls trip and left their husbands at home.

At halftime, Roberts asked Kubicek to pinch her. “Like is this real?” she asked. Iowa led 22-13 through one quarter and 38-37 at the half.

Aliyah Boston, the 2022 Player of the Year, was in early foul trouble and didn’t play at all in the second quarter. Quick analysis would believe Iowa being unable to pull away much would be problematic, but the problems for the Gamecocks started almost immediately. They played Czinano higher, and brought their length against Clark at the perimeter. Czinano rolled every time, as did others like reserve Addison O’Grady when Czinano found herself in foul trouble.

Boston said after the game teams know when they’re reading for South Carolina, they need to be physical and aggressive. Clark said the coaches had been working in the scout far longer than this week alone.

“I loved our game plan,” Clark said. “We really packed the paint, made them earn it around the rim. Obviously, they got some O-boards, but at the same time, nobody said we were going to outrebound them. That would have been a lie.”

South Carolina was all over the boards, 49-25, but only had a six-point edge in paint points and shot 39% to Iowa’s 49.1%. The Hawkeyes jarringly left Raven Johnson all alone on the perimeter, “living with” South Carolina hitting 3s. They didn’t, collecting four by game’s end as Johnson began to hit late. It wasn’t enough.

Iowa assistant coach Jan Jensen said she didn’t let her shoulders drop until 8.9 seconds with a four-point lead following Clark’s two free throws. Iowa fans began to roar again and stood to enjoy. They cheered as Clark joined the ESPN studio crew, stuck around to experience it and high-fived fellow Iowa fans they didn’t know in the halls as they milled about and later exited. The crew has traveled well from Carver-Hawkeye Arena to Seattle and now Dallas.

“We’ve had a Carver West, we have regular Carver, and we have a Carver South here,” Kate Martin, whose five rebounds in the first quarter set the tone and broke her regular-season average, said in the locker room. “I wouldn’t be surprised if more Hawk fans show up on Sunday.”

The Grangers, Kubicek and Roberts will all be back, though on different fandom sides this time. Roberts characterized the experience of seeing Iowa in a national championship game as “unrealistic.” Kubicek as a “life-altering experience.” It also applies to the greater growth of the women’s game and the environment that’s been cultivated.

“Women have been fighting forever to just get equality and I feel like this might be the thing that does it,” Roberts said.

“And Caitlin Clark beat all stats of all men in the game of basketball, hands down,” Kubicek said.

For Iowa, Clark and the thousands of fans, the fists unclench and the legend lives on for the season’s final two nights.