Caitlin Clark's recruitment may not be the spicy Iowa-UConn storyline new fans are hoping for

Caitlin Clark is regularly mentioned alongside basketball greats for not only her incredible ability to play the game, but also her fierce energy as a competitor.

Last month, the Iowa superstar was the subject of a fantastic ESPN in-depth profile. Wright Thompson, the article’s author, came away from his piece seeing Clark as “Kobe Bryant with a ponytail.”

In an interview with Dan Patrick, Thompson brought up another basketball legend when discussing what fuels Clark’s greatness.

“Like seriously, apex predator. All the stuff we hear about Michael Jordan’s ‘Last Dance’ thing. ‘I took it personal.’ Her brother used that exact phrase when describing that to me. One of her superpowers is she really takes things personally,” Thompson said on The Dan Patrick Show. “There’s just a lot of that energy. When you get through the symbolic importance of her success and what she’s doing for the women’s game, understandably and rightfully so – a lot of the conversation is about that. She’s also a great basketball player who wants to steal her show.”

For many basketball fans who have caught Caitlin Clark Fever, particularly those outside of Hawkeye Nation, Thompson’s article was the first time hearing about Clark’s recruitment. Thompson made a point of noting that Clark dreamed of playing for Geno Auriemma at UConn.

“Letters from college coaches stacked up at her house in those days,” Thompson wrote. “Her parents kept them from her until late in the process, trying instinctively to protect as much of her childhood as they could. I think they knew even then. Her dream school was, like everyone else, UConn. She was growing up and learning for the first time about being watched, about reputation. A lot of college coaches watched the same body language sequences (high school coach Kristin) Meyer did. Most didn’t mind. Dowling’s open gyms filled with the best of the best coaches in the country. One absence was conspicuous, though.

“Geno never came,” Meyer said.

Clark vs. UConn makes for a seemingly spicy storyline. For many college sports fans, it’s unconscionable that a legendary head coach of a powerhouse program did not recruit a 5-star prospect who became one of the sport’s all-time greats when said program was the prospect’s “dream school.”

Ahead of Friday’s Iowa-UConn game, Auriemma was asked about “reports” that he didn’t recruit the sport’s all-time scoring leader.

“Well, there’s a lot of kids we didn’t recruit, and there’s a lot of kids that don’t want to come to UConn,” Auriemma said. “I committed to Paige Bueckers very, very early, and it would have been silly for me to say to Paige, ‘hey, listen, we’re going to put you in the same backcourt, and then I’m going to try really hard to recruit Caitlin Clark. I don’t do it that way.'”

Auriemma’s take holds up with those who follow women’s college basketball. ESPN’s recruiting rankings for the Class of 2020 went as follows:

No. 1 Paige Bueckers
No. 2 Angel Reese
No.3 Cameron Brink
No. 4 Caitlin Clark

Bueckers’ career has gone differently than Clark, notably dealing with multiple major injuries. While she doesn’t hold all-time NCAA record, Bueckers is still a decorated college athlete, including Player of the Year (2021) and first-team All-America honors (2021, ’24).

While Thompson wrote of UConn being Clark’s “dream school,” Auriemma said this week that Clark never reached out to the program.

“Caitlin, obviously, is a tremendous player, generational player, but if Caitlin really wanted to come to UConn, she would have called me and said, ‘Coach, I really want to come to UConn,'” Auriemma told reporters.

Auriemma’s perspective is that everything worked out for the parties involved.

“So I don’t think that either of us lost out,” Auriemma said ahead of the Iowa-UConn game. “I think she made the best decision for her, and it’s worked out great. We made the decision we thought we needed to make. There’s a lot of players coming through from high school that we see, thousands of them. You’re only going to recruit some. You’re not going to recruit all of them. Some people do recruit all of them. I don’t.

“I try to lock into who fits with us, try to lock in on them early. That’s what happened with us and Paige. We felt really, really comfortable with that, and we went with it. Obviously in today’s world that’s a big deal. But those are decisions that are made every day, every year by every coach.”

Pouring more cold water on the “revenge game” storyline is that Clark has already faced UConn twice as a Hawkeye.

On March 27, 2021, the teams met in an NCAA Tournament game in San Antonio. UConn won 92-72 to end the Hawkeyes’ season.

In the March 2021 meeting, UConn’s Christyn Williams was the game’s high-scorer with 27 points. ESPN’s video recap, notably made the point that Bueckers, with the help of Williams, had outdueled Clark.

In November 2022, the teams met again in Portland as part of an event celebrating Nike’s Phil Knight. Though Bueckers missed the game as part of her medical redshirt season, UConn still got the better of Clark and the Hawkeyes, winning 86-79.

For Clark, Friday’s game will be about trying to beat UConn for the first time in her career to get back to the national title game. As her college career winds down, recruiting is likely the last thing on her mind.