Caitlin Clark says WNBA gamers and coaches are “method smarter” than in school

After only one season within the WNBA, Caitlin Clark seen a giant distinction between girls’s basketball on the skilled degree and basketball on the collegiate degree: IQ needed to thrive.

The 22-year-old Indiana Fever guard was just lately named TIME journal’s 2024 Athlete of the Year, and in his profile in the publicationClark shared her first impressions of the WNBA’s degree of competitors.

“Professional gamers {and professional} coaches – that is no disrespect to girls’s school basketball – are lots smarter. I really like girls’s school basketball. But for those who return and take a look at the best way folks protected me in school , it is virtually worrying,” Clark advised TIME.

Clark broke quite a few data throughout her time at Iowa, changing into the NCAA Division I girls’s profession scoring chief and all-time Division I chief in three-pointers in her ultimate season earlier than main the Hawkeyes to a second straight recreation of the nationwide championship and be named the nationwide participant of the yr.

In her rookie season within the WNBA, she added extra honors to her resume, together with All-WNBA First Team and Rookie of the Year, after setting the league’s single-season and single-game help data, changing into the primary rookie to realize a triple-double in WNBA historical past and breaking the rookie scoring file.

While Clark’s school basketball profession has not been with out its challenges, most notably battling fellow WNBA and school rivals Angel Reese and LSU on quite a few events and dropping her final likelihood at an NCAA match title to The South Carolina Gamecocks, Iowa native believes the general school competitors may have been higher.

“They did not double me, they did not lure me, they weren’t bodily. And it is exhausting. It’s school. Numerous these girls won’t ever play one other basketball recreation of their life. They haven’t got the IQ to know how the sport works, so I completely perceive it and it is not disrespectful in any respect.

Clark, who was chosen No. 1 total choose within the 2024 WNBA Draft, she did not have it simple within the WNBA, however she discovered a solution to excel regardless of rising pains.

The Indiana Fever completed the season 20-20 and have been eradicated within the first spherical of the WNBA playoffs.

FOLLOW Follow your favorites to personalize your FOX Sports expertise

Caitlin Clark

Indiana fever

National Women’s Basketball Association