Caitlin Clark reveals her family wanted her to commit to Notre Dame in 2019

Women’s College Basketball

Published Mar. 21, 2024 12:47 a.m. ET

Caitlin Clark was supposed to be the next Rudy Ruettiger … well, sort of.

According to a story published by ESPN on Wednesday, Clark wasn’t supposed to star for the Iowa Hawkeyes — or at least that’s not what people close to her believed when she chose her school in 2019.

“My family wanted me to go to Notre Dame,” Clark told ESPN. “At the end of the day they were like, you make the decision for yourself. But it’s NOTRE DAME! ‘Rudy’ was one of my favorite movies. How could you not pick Notre Dame?”

Even Clark’s former high coach Kristin Meyer thought the all-time NCAA DI leading scorer was headed to Indiana, telling ESPN, “For a while I thought she was gonna end up at Notre Dame.”

Instead, Clark committed to Iowa, and what a great decision that turned out to be for her. In the last four years at Iowa, Clark has averaged 28.4 points, 8.2 assists and 1.5 steals per game, and in March, she passed Pete Maravich to become the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer.

Iowa earned recently earned the No. 1 seed in the Albany 2 region of the 2024 NCAA women’s basketball tournament. The Hawkeyes will face off against the winner of the play-in matchup between Holy Cross and Tennessee Martin on Saturday.

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Women’s College Basketball

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