>This year’s thrilling transition to the title game is something that Iowa’s hometown hero Caitlin Clark hopes to..

>This year’s thrilling transition to the title game is something that Iowa’s hometown hero Caitlin Clark hopes to.

Caitlin Clark realized she was still in her pajamas as admirers flocked to her bus, clapping and holding homemade placards as TV cameras rolled.

Caitlin Clark realized she was still in her pajamas as admirers flocked to her bus, clapping and holding homemade placards as TV cameras rolled.

This was the aftermath of the 2023 NCAA tournament for Iowa women’s basketball. An electrifying run had ended in the first championship game in program history, and the driving force was Clark, a junior guard who spent the month turning heads and smashing records. No college player, male or female, had scored as much in one tournament. No one had recorded a 40-point tournament triple-double. (Or, for that matter, a 30-point tournament triple-double.) No one had sunk so many postseason threes. Clark had elevated her play into something that felt closer to grand, jaw-dropping theater. She took what she had been doing for years—no-look passes, shots from the logo, tricky maneuvers in traffic—and delivered on the biggest stage. Clark finished short of a title, with Iowa falling to LSU in the final, 102–85. But she helped secure a new kind of attention: Viewership for the women’s national championship set records and doubled year-over-year. Clark had done something the game had never quite seen under a spotlight it had never quite experienced.

After that, the bus stopped.

For now, Clark had a straightforward response for her. (She put on a sweatshirt before posing for photos in her PJ pants and signing signatures.) But there would be a ton of additional inquiries. Over the previous three years, the 21-year-old’s star had been gradually growing; in a matter of weeks, it had burst. It was up to her now to interpret that.

She would also have time to consider it. Clark has never been one to ease up, relax, or take a break. However, following the tournament, Iowa coach Lisa Bluder advised her to take a break—at least two weeks without touching a basketball. This instruction was partly related to physical healing. But more for her psychological well-being. Bluder wanted to make sure that Clark had time to comprehend what it meant for herself before the discussion about what Clark’s performance had meant for women’s basketball, women in general, and sports in general became too loud.

Bluder states, “She had to take that action.” “I firmly think she needed that time to process what she had done, come to terms with it, and get ready to do it again.”

Clark, then, did not pick up a basketball for the following two weeks; instead, she picked up everything that had come home with her. Clark explains, “I felt like I had all these NCAA goods.” “About a million things from the entire journey.” The western cap that she and her colleagues received at the Dallas Final Four. Relics from their Seattle Sweet 16 tour excursion. Clark combed through each memento and piece of paper as she unloaded, attempting to memorize its history.

“Obviously, I remember the basketball games really well,” Clark says. “But it was all the little experiences in between.”