(CNN) — As Caitlin Clark’s stardom has transcended women’s college basketball this year, she has become the center of its universe around which everything else orbits.
After doing so much to popularize the sport, she now has an opportunity to complete her fairytale season on Sunday when Iowa appears in the women’s national championship game.
But the Hawkeyes will face the mighty South Carolina for the title, a team which is undefeated, the No. 1 overall seed and 108-3 in the last seasons. Nine of the previous 10 undefeated teams who reached the title game have won the championship, according to ESPN
Despite these odds, Iowa will be buoyed by the memory of defeating South Carolina in the Final Four last year, upsetting the Gamecocks behind a record-breaking 41 points from Clark.
And a similar performance from this season’s most dominant player will be required to defeat this season’s most dominant team.
How to watch
The Gamecocks and the Hawkeyes will face off for the title at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday, April 7 at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, Ohio.
Some tickets were still available at time of publication, though the cheapest cost $400, but the game can also be watched on ABC.
‘The legacy of Caitlin Clark’
It is a second consecutive NCAA championship game for Iowa, after it fell short at the final hurdle last year against LSU. The Hawkeyes have already exacted revenge against LSU, defeating their rival in the Elite Eight, but now have a chance to win the title at the second time of asking.
And, of course, the spotlight will be on Clark, following her extraordinary season in which she became the all-time leading scorer in NCAA Division I basketball history, and gained a level of stardom that saw the term ‘Clark-onomics’ coined to describe her impact on women’s college basketball.
“We get to witness firsthand the legacy of Caitlin Clark,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley told reporters on Saturday. “You watch her. You prep for her. You can’t help but to really love how she dissects the game. You love how she executes.”
Clark seems able to turn the tide of a game seemingly at will, to dismiss any lingering doubts from a shaky period and go on a scoring run.
In the Final Four, she overcame a poor first-half shooting performance and impressive UConn defense to drag her team back into the game and finish with 21 points. It didn’t matter that she failed to make a three-point shot in the first half, going 0-for-6, and was held to six points in the first two quarters.
“The best thing about our group is we went into the locker room at halftime and it wasn’t, like, oh, come on, you’ve got to make shots. It was, no, stop turning the ball over and you’re going to be perfectly fine,” she told reporters after the UConn game.
Her popularity, in part, pulled in 12 million viewers to watch the Iowa-LSU Elite Eight game on Monday, more than the average MLB World Series, NBA Final or Stanley Cup games last season. Iowa’s Final Four game against UConn peaked at 17 million viewers, making it ESPN’s second-best non-football telecast ever. Now, Clark’s presence in the championship game makes it one of the most hotly anticipated women’s college basketball games ever.
Part of her genius is her ability to improve the level of everyone else on her team too. It was sophomore forward Hannah Stuelke who led the way for Iowa in the Final Four with 23 points on 9-of-12 shooting, attributing her performance to “confidence” after the game.
“I think the confidence is everything,” she told reporters. “Especially hearing Caitlin Clark talk about me like that, it gives me a confidence boost. I think anyone would say that. But they just fed me the ball very well.”
‘The team of the year’
But for all that Clark has dominated the headlines, South Carolina has dominated on the court, boasting a perfect 37-0 record this season and reaching the Final Four each of the last four years.
“We know we have our hands full,” Clark told reporters on Saturday. “Everybody around the country knows South Carolina has been the team all year. They’ve deserved that. They’ve earned it. They’ve just been incredible.”
And the Gamecocks are still fueled by the painful memories from last year’s Final Four defeat against Iowa, though all their starters from that game have since left, adding another layer of rivalry to this charged title game.
“I feel like it’s unfinished business,” guard Raven Johnson said on Friday, per ESPN. “We’ve got one more game and we can’t let down right now because we didn’t come this far just to come this far. So we have a mission. We came here for one reason, to get a national championship.”
Led by 6-foot-7 center Kamilla Cardoso, South Carolina defeated No. 3 NC State 78-59 in this year’s Final Four as Cardoso finished with 22 points and 11 rebounds.
There is a formidable strength in depth in this South Carolina team, Ashlyn Watkins came off the bench in the Final Four and added 20 rebounds to go with eight points, while Johnson contributed with five assists, 13 points and two rebounds.
And in each of the first four rounds of this NCAA tournament, South Carolina had a different leading top scorer, such is their prowess across the court.
“Iowa’s a challenge,” Staley told reporters on Saturday. “They’re playing their best basketball. They’re playing inspired. They’re playing like they want to win a national championship. So are we. I think it’s a crash course of who’s going to have the better run, who’s going to be able to execute when it’s time to execute.”
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