Caitlin Clark nearly chose a different path that could have altered the trajectory of women’s college basketball, revealing in a recent interview that she came close to attending Notre Dame before settling on Iowa.
The Indiana Fever guard and former Iowa Hawkeyess star discussed her recruitment process on the New Heights podcast hosted by Jason and Travis Kelce. A clip of her comments, shared widely this week, detailed her visits to the South Bend campus and the internal conflict that followed.
“I visited Notre Dame a bunch of times. I loved Notre Dame. As a kid you want to go to Notre Dame. It’s the same as Notre Dame Football. It’s like the coolest thing in the world,” Clark said.
She praised the program’s storied history across sports while explaining the decisive factor that steered her elsewhere.
“It’s Notre Dame. It has that tradition. They’ve had so many great players go through there in every single sport. But I just knew, something… I could feel it in my gut… I’m not supposed to go there,” Clark said.
Instead, the West Des Moines native committed to Iowa in November 2019. The decision kept her roughly two hours from home and positioned her to revive a program that had experienced modest postseason success in prior years.
“So I picked Iowa. Iowa was really good at Women’s Basketball before I went there as well. Made a few Sweet 16’s, made an Elite 8. But they hadn’t been to the Final Four since like 1992. I wanted to go somewhere that was good but maybe hadn’t been like a blue blood for quite a few years. And kind of help them get back to that,” Clark said.
Proximity to family also factored heavily into the choice.
“It was obviously my home state too. And two hours from where I grew up. Perfect distance so my parents can’t just show up but also you can go home if you wanted to,” she added.
Clark’s gut feeling proved transformative. Over four seasons at Iowa, she scored 3,951 points, establishing the NCAA Division I career scoring record for both men and women. She averaged 28.4 points, 8.2 assists and 7.1 rebounds per game across 139 contests.
Under her leadership, the Hawkeyes reached the Final Four in 2023 and again in 2024, appearing in consecutive national championship games. Those runs marked the program’s first Final Four berths since 1993. Iowa finished 109-30 during Clark’s tenure and captured three straight Big Ten Tournament titles.
Clark led the nation in scoring three times and in assists three times. She set NCAA tournament career marks with 491 points, 152 assists and 78 three-pointers. Her single-season totals included a Division I women’s record 1,234 points and 201 three-pointers in 2023-24.
The impact extended beyond the court. Attendance and television ratings for women’s basketball surged during her college career, a phenomenon often called the Caitlin Clark effect. Iowa retired her No. 22 jersey in February 2025.
Selected first overall by the Indiana Fever in the 2024 WNBA draft, Clark has continued producing at a high level. In the 2026 season she is averaging 22.1 points and 8.3 assists per game through 32 contests.
Former Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw, who recruited Clark, has previously described the commitment as soft and said the player ultimately handled the change with class. Clark’s decision left the Fighting Irish without one of the most prolific scorers in college history.
Clark’s choice to stay in-state and help rebuild Iowa’s program delivered results that few could have predicted at the time. The Hawkeyes became a national power, and Clark emerged as one of the most recognizable athletes in the sport.
Her comments on New Heights underscore how a single internal sense of direction shaped not only her own career but the broader landscape of women’s basketball. The numbers and the Final Four appearances stand as lasting evidence of that decision.
