A 10-year-old Caitlin Clark witnessed the most famous stare in college basketball history.
Clark wanted to be around the game as much as possible, and, as fortune would have it, Tennessee played Baylor in a 2012 regional final in Clark’s hometown of Des Moines, Iowa. Clark was among the 9,068 in attendance as Brittney Griner and Baylor beat Pat Summitt’s Lady Vols.
Years before Clark would catapult this sport to its zenith, she watched a matriarch of women’s basketball coach in her final game. During the second half, with Tennessee trailing, Summitt struck her familiar pose: arms crossed, eyes piercing.
“To say I got to see the last game Pat Summitt ever coached is so, so cool – in my home state, in my home city,’ Clark recalled earlier in her Iowa career.
A dozen years later, Summitt would love seeing what’s taken hold in women’s basketball, this meteoric moment Clark’s stardom helped engineer. Few coaches worked harder than Summitt to promote and uplift the sport throughout her legendary 38-year career.
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“What’s happening now is exactly everything Pat Summitt worked her whole career for, and it’s cool to see,” said Abby Conklin, who won two national championships playing for Summitt’s Lady Vols.
“She really would’ve been tickled to see this outpouring of support and interest,” Debby Jennings said of Summitt, who died in 2016 at age 64 five years after announcing she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Jennings is an encyclopedia of Lady Vols basketball. She was the program’s media relations point person throughout the Summitt era.
And what of Clark’s game?
Could the NCAA’s scoring queen have played for Summitt? What would a steely-eyed coach who preached discipline, defense and rebounding think of Iowa’s bucket barrage and a player whose 3-point range begins as soon as she enters the arena?
On that subject, we can only speculate. I spoke with former players and others who knew Summitt well to capture an idea of what a coach who raised the bar for women’s sports would think of this player taking the game to new heights.
Could Iowa’s Caitlin Clark have played for Pat Summitt? Let’s debate
Summitt could’ve coached anybody. That’s Semeka Randall Lay’s opinion.
In particular, Summitt “loved winners,” says Randall Lay, Winthrop’s coach who starred on Summitt’s 1997-98 team that finished 39-0.
Clark wins. The Hawkeyes have 104 victories these past four seasons. They’re a projected No. 1 seed for the NCAA women’s tournament, Clark’s grand finale before heading to the WNBA.
“Pat loved people who loved to compete, who wanted to win, who were willing to sacrifice, who were willing to do whatever it takes to win a basketball game,” Randall Lay said.
“Love and passion for the game, it breathes through (Clark).”
Conklin describes Clark as “a Pat Summitt-type player.”
“Pat Summitt would have loved Caitlin Clark,” Conklin said. “She’s hard-nosed. She’s mentally tough.”
Clark’s logo 3-pointers get her trending on social media, but the beauty of her game extends past her jumpshot. She’s also a conductor and a rebounder. Clark leads the nation in scoring, 3-pointers made and assists.
“I think her ability to fill a stat line, Pat would’ve appreciated,” said Dan Fleser, a longtime sportswriter who chronicled much of the Summitt era for the Knoxville News.
Marciniak played point guard for the Lady Vols during the 1990s. Marciniak admires Clark’s shooting, her competitiveness, her basketball IQ, her ability to create and see the floor. She thinks Summitt would have most appreciated her passing.
“This selfless part of Clark’s game would have gotten Pat’s attention in a very positive way,” Marciniak said.
Marciniak, though, said that if Clark wanted to play for Summitt, she’d have had to earn it like anyone else: by playing defense.
Marciniak recalls Lady Vols practices during which the ball rack never even appeared. You don’t need a ball rack to play defense.
“Caitlin’s defense would’ve driven Pat crazy, because she was such a defensive-minded coach,” Marciniak said. “Pat was an equal opportunity coach, which put everyone on the same playing field in terms of maximum effort on the defensive end – always 100%, or you could sit next to her on the bench, no matter who you were.”
Others are decisive in their assessment that Clark and Summitt would have been a premier match of player and coach.
Summitt famously said offense sells tickets, defense wins games and rebounding wins championships.
The 6-foot Clark leads Iowa in rebounding.
“Caitlin likes to play both ends of the floor,” Jennings said. “Pat being the defense and rebounding coach that she was, she would’ve loved that part of her game, because she is an all-around player.”
Imagining Caitlin Clark within a Pat Summitt offense
How might Summitt have deployed Clark on offense?
A couple of people I spoke with envisioned Summitt giving Clark the greenlight to fire away, within a team-structured offense.
Clark “would’ve blown the roof off of Thompson-Boling Arena,” Conklin said.
Committed and unflinching though Summitt was about defense, she took a flexible approach to offense. She evolved her system to meet her personnel.
And she knew when to ask another coach for help.
Highlighted by the ‘Three Meeks,” as Chamique Holdsclaw, Tamika Catchings and Randall Lay were known, Summitt had stockpiled a wealth of talent leading up to Tennessee’s undefeated season.
Summitt connected with Tex Winter, Phil Jackson’s longtime assistant coach, to inquire about the triangle offense. Winter innovated the Chicago Bulls’ triangle system. In the summer of 1996, Summitt traveled to Chicago to observe Bulls practices and learn their offense. She brought the triangle home to Tennessee.
“She ran that offense to center around Chamique and Tamika, who were deadly at the elbow,” Randall Lay said.
Nobody stopped the ‘Meeks.” The Lady Vols ran roughshod through their schedule – and they attracted quite a following.
Before Caitlin Clark’s celebrity, Pat Summitt’s Lady Vols were rock stars
Flip on your television, and you might see Clark on a State Farm commercial. On a night when Iowa plays, my X (formerly known as Twitter) feed populates with highlights of Clark draining 3-pointers. Fans lucky enough to watch Clark in person congregate hours before tipoff in long lines outside the arena.
Summitt retired before the height of social media or the dawn of NIL, so comparing Clark’s transcendent star power to the spotlight the Lady Vols attracted three decades ago is not apples to apples.
Like Clark, though, Summitt’s super squads brought new fans into the sport. Summitt won eight national championships. At the peak of her dynasty, the Lady Vols commanded the limelight.
Jennings remembers fans assembling eight deep to greet the team bus at the 1998 SEC Tournament in Columbus, Georgia.
When Fleser covered the Lady Vols on the road, he saw venues that typically attracted sparse crowds transform into buzzing arenas filled to the gills.
“The ’97-98 team that went undefeated, as the season went on, it was like traveling with the Rolling Stones,” Fleser said.
Well, either the Stones, or …
“By the time ’98 rolled around, … it was like traveling with the Beatles,” Jennings said. “We couldn’t get out of the gym, there were so many autograph seekers.”
In 1998, a record-breaking crowd of 24,597 crammed into Thompson-Boling, exceeding the Tennessee arena’s capacity for the Lady Vols’ win against rival Connecticut.
That was then.
And now?
Iowa turned Kinnick Stadium into Clark’s playground last October, when 55,646 fans watched Iowa beat DePaul in an exhibition game.
“Pat would appreciate the phenomena of Clark,” Fleser said.
For the final word, let’s return to Tennessee’s former point guard who read a eulogy at Summitt’s funeral.
“What would have really impressed Pat Summitt about Caitlin Clark,” Marciniak said, “is if she wins a national championship.”
Clark and the Hawkeyes cutting down nets, think of the attention that would command for the sport Summitt committed her life to elevating.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s SEC Columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer.