After scoring a career-high 49 points Thursday, Iowa senior guard Caitlin Clark passed Kelsey Plum (3,527) to become the all-time leader in NCAA Division I women's basketball history at 3,569. With five more games left in the regular season, plus the Big Ten tournament and the NCAA tournament to follow, Clark isn't finished yet. And there might soon be more history in store for Clark.
Having surpassed Washington's Plum, Clark is closing in on Pete Maravich's men's Division I record of 3,667 points. At her current pace of 32.7 points per game this season, Clark would need four more games to pass Maravich, potentially putting the record in sight on Iowa's senior day against Ohio State on March 2 in the regular-season finale.
Although Maravich set his record in just three seasons, averaging a mind-boggling 44.2 points, it has stood for more than five decades since the NCAA made freshmen eligible in 1972. Taking advantage of the fifth year of eligibility for players affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Antoine Davis of Detroit Mercy made the closest run at Maravich, falling three points short when his career ended last year.
Now Clark -- who could potentially return for a fifth season if she foregoes this year's WNBA draft -- has a chance to become the leading scorer in Division I basketball history, men's or women's.
Women surpass men in four-year scoring
Because Davis played five seasons of college basketball, the leading scorers on the women's side are already tops when it comes to a four-season Division I career. Freeman Williams owns the record on the men's side. He scored 3,249 points at Portland State from 1974 to 1978. Five women have surpassed that total.
There's an interesting explanation for that. The length of the NCAA season has expanded at the same time that early entry has grown more prevalent in the NBA. As a result, besides Maravich, all of the top 10 scorers in Division I men's basketball history played the bulk of their career in what would be considered mid-major conferences.
Doug McDermott, one of two players in this group besides Maravich who were taken in the first round of the NBA draft (Lionel Simmons was the third), played his senior season for Creighton in the Big East but his first three in the Missouri Valley Conference before the team's move. Including Davis, four of the top 10 scorers in men's college basketball history have never played in the NBA.
Because the WNBA's rules limit early entry, more women's stars have stuck around to accumulate large total numbers of games played. Brittney Griner played more games during four seasons at Baylor, reaching the Final Four twice, than Davis did in his five at Detroit Mercy.
Just one of the top 10 Division I women's scorers to complete their careers, Florida International star Jerica Coley didn't play in the WNBA. (Coley was with the New York Liberty for training camp in 2014 but didn't make the team.)
Team success separates Clark and Maravich
It's going to take a dramatic change in how basketball is played for any Division I player, men's or women's, to come close to duplicating Maravich's scoring average at LSU. However, it's worth remembering the different context in which his scoring came.
During Maravich's three seasons playing for his dad, Press Maravich, the Tigers finished better than .500 in SEC play only once. They went 13-5 in 1969-70, Maravich's senior season, finishing second in the conference behind eventual national champion Kentucky.
Certainly, Maravich had a positive impact at LSU. The season he sat out as a freshman, the Tigers went 3-23 and won only a single conference game. They'd gone 2-14 the season before, leading LSU to hire Press Maravich. The Tigers won more conference games in 1969-70 than they had in 16 seasons.
Still, Maravich's heroics didn't translate into team success the same way Clark's have at Iowa. Last season, the Hawkeyes reached their first Final Four in three decades, a run that ended with a loss to LSU in the title game. And this season's Iowa team, 12-2 so far in the Big Ten and ranked No. 4 in the country, might be even better despite the graduation of second-leading scorer Monika Czinano.
Clark also closing in on women's major college record
Although no Division I player has scored more points than Clark in the NCAA era, Kansas Hall of Famer Lynette Woodard is the all-time major women's college basketball leader with 3,649 points. During Woodard's career, from 1977 through 1981, the NCAA was interested in only men's athletics, leaving women's basketball to the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW).
Woodard averaged 26.3 points over 139 games as a Jayhawk. She led Kansas to the AIAW tournament three times, advancing no further than what would today be considered the Sweet 16. Woodard was later a part of the 1984 USA women's national team that won gold on home soil in Los Angeles and played in the first two seasons of the WNBA, starting 27 of her 28 games for the Cleveland Rockers in the 1997 season before retiring at age 39.
If Clark maintains her current average, she'd just catch Woodard by the Hawkeyes' penultimate game of the regular season on Feb. 28 at Minnesota.