Caitlin Clark staring down championship-or-bust reality during March Madness

CLEVELAND — Forty more minutes. That’s all she was asking for. That’s all she wanted. Forty more minutes to carry all of Iowa on her back and lift it back to the NCAA game. Forty more minutes playing with these girls, for this coach, for this school.

Forty last minutes for this last chance to stand atop a ladder and snip a strand of one of the nets inside Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse on Sunday evening and hear everyone hail her as a champion.

Never mind that after all the jaw-dropping logo 3s, and all the bounce passes hitting teammates in stride, and breaking college basketball’s scoring record, and all the inspiration she has provided for a new generation of wide-eyed little fans, after the way she has elevated a sport that has been hoping against hope  to one day upset an old world applecart that had for so long granted it no more than second-class citizenship, after all those shining moments, Caitlin Clark has never been able to celebrate the One Shining Moment she deserves.

She had turned this tournament into her personal playground, a determined young woman forever working on her craft, seemingly born to live out this exhilarating basketball dream for all to see and embrace.

She has been the best player on the court virtually every time, and even with a cohesive supporting cast, there have been occasions when her team needed her to be the best player on the court to prevail. 

Once upon a time there was a school called Indiana State that needed a player named Larry Bird to be the best player on the court in the 1979 NCAA championship game against a player named Magic Johnson and a school called Michigan State, and he left settling for second best and second place.

“That’s the toughest one I’ve ever taken,” Bird would say 12 years ago, “because you had all of your friends. You’re at a college, you step away from home, I felt that Indiana State, they accepted me, brought me in. It was tough and it’s still tough.”

Dan Marino played 17 years with the Dolphins and lost his one Super Bowl appearance to Joe Montana and the 49ers. “I’ve never experienced what it is like to walk off the field as a Super Bowl champion. You’ve just got to accept what it is,” Marino said in an interview with NFL Network. “Would I like to know what that felt like? Yeah, hell yeah, I’d love to know what that felt like.”

Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr, are among the MLB greats who never won a World Series ring. Teddy Ballgame lost his only World Series appearance with the Red Sox to the Cardinals in 1946 in Game 7. He sat silently by his locker for 30 minutes before leaving after going 5-for-25.

“I must have been physically tired,” Williams said. “I wanted to hit. Their pitchers didn’t fool me, but I just was hitting the ball off-center. You never saw me hit so many pop flies. I can’t explain it, but I know that if you see me at Sarasota at all next spring, you won’t see me early.”

The day before he lost his fourth consecutive Super Bowl, Bills HOF quarterback Jim Kelly said: “There are some people who say, ‘You deserve to win a Super Bowl.’ I agree with them.”

Clark was denied in the national championship game a year ago by Angel Reese and LSU. She avenged that defeat in the Elite Eight. An injury-ravaged UConn team no one expected to be in the Final Four is standing in her way on Friday night, led by star Paige Bueckers, once considered the No. 1 high school recruit and now a testament to faith and resilience after missing all of last season with a torn ACL.

“When I first got injured I was always like ‘Why this, Why me, Why now?’” Bueckers said.

She is a redshirt junior who came to UConn to win a national championship, and lost in the 2022 NCAA Final to South Carolina. No one wanted to buy into the Caitlin versus Paige storyline, especially not the protagonists. Caitlin knew this much: Legendary UConn Coach Geno Auriemma had won 11 national championships … she showed up at her final Final Four desperate for one.