Record-breaking Iowa star Caitlin Clark continued to collect awards in streaks on Tuesday as she won the John R. Wooden Award as the most outstanding women’s college basketball player for the second consecutive season.
Clark was named the Naismith National Player of the Year last week before her Hawkeyes played in the Women’s NCAA Tournament Final Four. Iowa defeated UConn in the semifinals before losing in the title game for the second straight year as South Carolina completed an undefeated championship season.
The Wooden Award’s other finalists were Stanford’s Cameron Brink, UConn’s Paige Bueckers, Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo and Southern California’s JuJu Watkins.
Clark, who will collect the award Friday in Los Angeles, led the country in scoring average (31.6 points per game) and assists (8.9 per game), the first player to finish atop both categories in consecutive seasons.
She broke the NCAA women’s career scoring record this season and became the greatest scorer, male or female, in NCAA Division I history, with 3,951 points to surpass Pete Maravich.
Clark also totaled 1,144 assists and 990 rebounds in her career, and her 28.42 scoring average and 548 3-pointers are Division I records. She broke the single-season marks with 201 3-pointers and 1,234 points this season.
There have been six other two-time winners of the Wooden Award Women’s Player of the Year: LSU’s Seimone Augustus (2005, ’06), Tennessee’s Candace Parker (2007, ’08), UConn’s Maya Moore (2009, ’11), Baylor’s Brittney Griner (2012, ’13), UConn’s Breanna Stewart (2015, ’16) and Oregon’s Sabrina Ionescu (2019, ’20).
Voting for the award was held March 19-26.
–Field Level Media