Caitlin Clark’s NCAA Scoring Record Will Have an Asterisk
At some point in the next few days, barring an untimely injury or an unlikely cold streak, Caitlin Clark will score her 3,528th career point for the Iowa Hawkeyes. In doing so, she will become the leading scorer in NCAA history.
But she won’t be the No. 1 scorer in women’s college basketball.
That record will still belong to Lynette Woodard, who starred for Kansas in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. Back then, Woodard was the game’s must-see star. She scored 3,649 points over four seasons, still more than any other major-college player.
The NCAA doesn’t recognize Woodard’s mark, however. That’s because she played at a time when women’s college sports had their own governing body—and the NCAA was fighting to keep them out.
Instead, the player identified as the leading scorer in the NCAA record books is Kelsey Plum, who scored 3,527 points for Washington from 2013-17. Clark is on pace to pass that total as soon as Sunday’s game at Nebraska. Some of the game’s prominent coaches, though, say that as impressive as Plum’s feat was, Woodard’s career tally should be the record of record.
“I think the overall record by Lynette Woodard is THE RECORD,” wrote Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer in an email, days after surpassing Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski to become the all-time coaching wins leader in college basketball. VanDerveer noted something especially impressive about Woodard’s feat: She played before the advent of the 3-point shot.
Caitlin Clark’s NCAA Scoring Record Will Have an Asterisk© Provided by The Wall Street Journal
Others agree that Woodard and the other women who played in the decade before college sports’ governing body went co-ed shouldn’t be excluded from all-time records just because the NCAA excluded women’s sports at the time.
Muffet McGraw, who coached Notre Dame’s women to two NCAA titles before retiring from the game, and Lark Birdsong, Iowa’s first women’s basketball coach, also said they believe that Woodard owns the overall career scoring record. Kim Mulkey, coach of reigning national champion LSU, said through a spokesman that there’s a valid argument for Woodard as the record-holder.