Caitlin Clark of Iowa is ready for an emotional home finale with added incentive from the West Virginia coach.
Clark has proven herself in basketball, so she doesn’t need any more encouragement going into her final game at Iowa’s Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
Iowa City, Iowa For forty years, Lisa Bluder has been a coach. It’s her 22nd NCAA Tournament experience. The coach of Iowa is somewhat familiar with them.
In the tender embrace of Carver-Hawkeye Arena, during the embrace-it-out before Iowa’s final home game as the top-seeded team, a disagreement has surfaced.
It all began with remarks made on Selection Sunday by West Virginia coach Mark Kellogg, which went viral on social media.
At the Mountaineers’ viewing party on Selection Sunday, Kellogg (now) famously stated, “Let’s send Caitlin Clark packing.”
Now, take a look at the opponents the Mountaineers will face on Monday night in the tournament’s second round.
It’s like speaking out against sunsets when it comes to Clark right now. Either way, it makes little sense because both will eventually increase once more.
This season, Kellogg and the Mountaineers are attempting a first of sorts. So far, Clark hasn’t been quite as slowed as the current national player of the year.
However, more of Clark’s on-court acting was shown during Iowa’s first-round victory over Holy Cross on Saturday.
She lodged complaints with referees when an opponent’s player elbowed her in the face, to the extent that her father was shown on TV telling his daughter to “Stop.”
The purpose of the call was not to penalize the player intentionally. It’s one thing to see a father captured on camera giving his live opinion as if he and his daughter were still in their West Des Moines driveway.
Another thing Iowa coach Lisa Bluder would rather see is an opponent coach speaking to the team from the lectern while disparaging a single player in a potential second-round match.
“I know he tried to retract his statements quite a bit. On Kellogg’s remark, Bluder stated, “But the team as a whole witnessed it.” “They are free to use it however they like.”
And the Iowa locker room has definitely had conversation about the matter. There was no mistaking the coach’s uneasiness.
“If I speak out, I won’t single out one player,” Bluder continued on Sunday. “I won’t suggest that we send one member of their team home.
The rest of our team is quite talented, but that definitely separates them. They also needed to pass Princeton first.”
The Mountaineers accomplished just that, to their credit. But any loose lips are fuel for an advantage for this Iowa club that will always be in the NCAA Women’s Tournament.
The Hawkeyes team is already resolving emotional wounds from its final home game.
