By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – The hype surrounding Iowa junior guard Caitlin Clark is so enormous and continues to grow with each electrifying performance that it’s easy to forget that she plays for a team.

Clark is the best player on the Iowa women’s basketball team, the most popular player on the team, and by far the most important player on the team.

So, everything she gets from a hype, and from an attention standpoint, is well deserved.

But Clark would also be the first to say that she can’t do it alone.

Basketball is a team sport in which it takes at least five players contributing to a common cause.

And that was never more apparent than during Iowa’s 74-66 victory over a tough and feisty Georgia team in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Sunday at a sold out and highly energized Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Clark led Iowa in scoring as usual with 22 points, and with 12 assists, but she only had 16 points before making a key basket and four free throws down the stretch that helped to secure the win, and a trip to the NCAA Sweet 16.

Four of Iowa’s five starters scored at least 14 points, and the only starter that didn’t score in double figures, senior guard Kate Martin, had five assists and a key deflection that led to a late Georgia turnover.

“She finished with a lot because she had some free throws,” Georgia head coach and Cedar Rapids native Katie Abrahamson-Henderson said of Clark’s point total. “She had 16 points. Scouting report. And she averages 27 points a game, that’s a lot.

“I think we did a great job on her. And I think their role players really stepped up.”

Abrahamson-Henderson was as feisty in her post-game press conference as her players were during the game.

She wasn’t about to let the media conduct a Caitlin Clark love fest, and she said some things that probably raised a few eyebrows, such as saying that her talented senior guard, Diamond Battles, who scored 21 points, was the best player on the court.

That wasn’t necessarily a slight against Clark, but Abrahamson-Henderson was obviously sending a message and pushing a biased narrative.

“Let me say first, Diamond was the best player on the floor tonight,” Abrahamson-Henderson said. “She had — how many points did she have? Diamond had 21 points. So, I mean, she was the reason why we were doing what we were doing.

“So, I think, you know, our team played and did an amazing job, and played great defense, played suffocating defense. And down the stretch is not anything indicative of the game.”

Abrahamson-Henderson was a star in her own right in basketball at Cedar Rapids Washington High School, and she played for two seasons at Georgia from 1986-88 before transferring to Iowa where she played under C. Vivian Stringer from 1988-90.

Sunday’s game would’ve been huge for Abrahamson-Henderson without her connection to Iowa. But her ties to Iowa seemed to fuel her fire, and her frustration from losing, even more.

“I know everything is going to be about Iowa right now,” Abrahamson-Henderson said. “But my team is really good. They are really good. We came in here, we fought like crazy, we were the underdogs, but there was no underdog here today. We represented Georgia really, really well.

“And it was a tight ball game. We made runs. We went up. They cut it. They made some runs, we cut it back. It was an even game the whole game. The whole game. The last two minutes is not the game. So, you know, I mean we had two really really good teams on the floor today. And one of them was Georgia. For sure.”

Abrahamson-Henderson had every right to defend her team, and to be proud of its performance because the Lady Bulldogs nearly did prevail in a hostile road environment.

She did what every head coach would do by promoting her team in a place where there wasn’t much support.

And so did Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder when told what Abrahamson-Henderson said about Diamond Battles being the best player on the court.

“I think she was good,” Bluder said of Battles. “Was she the best player on the floor? She had 21 points, one assists, two turnovers. I mean, I’m going to be biased and she’s going to be biased. She thinks Diamond Battles. I think she was the best Georgia player on the floor.

“But you have a hard time telling me that Caitlin Clark wasn’t the best player when she has 12 assists and 22 points and three steals. Numbers are right there.”

Diamond Battles was outstanding in Sunday’s game, but to say she was the best player on the court is a reach, and a case of a frustrated head coach defending her team, partly by minimizing and downplaying the more celebrated player on the other team.

And fair enough if that helps to deal with a painful loss.

But even though Caitlin Clark was held below her 27-point scoring average, she showed that her impact goes far beyond just scoring points.

Georgia was determined to make things difficult for Clark on offense, and part of that strategy included picking her up at mid-court, and another part of the strategy was to be extremely physical.

And it nearly worked.

Nearly.

Clark could have become frustrated and started hunting for shots and taking bad shots.

But that isn’t how she operates despite what her critics say.

It’s hard to think of any bad shot that Clark took in Sunday’s game.

And when her team needed a basket, instead of launching one of her logo threes that fans love, Clark saw an opening and made a running bank shot in the lane to give Iowa a 70-66 lead with 43 seconds remaining.

She then made four consecutive free throws in the final seconds to secure a spot in the Sweet 16.

The free throws came as a result of a technical foul and an intentional fouls by Georgia in the final seconds.

The Georgia players were clearly upset and frustrated with how the game ended, and their head coach carried that emotion into the post-game press conference.

Iowa fell short of making the Sweet 16 last season as Creighton pulled off the upset in the second round at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Clark, and her teammates, refused to let that happen again.

“I really did not want to let this team lose again in this round,” Clark said. “I knew I needed to step up and make plays for this team.”

Iowa was short-handed from a personnel standpoint on Sunday as freshman forward Hannah Stuelke missed the game due to an injury that occurred late in practice on Saturday, while senior guard Molly Davis limped off the court in the first half and played less than two minutes.

All the starters played at least 37 minutes, led by Clark, who played the whole 40.

Clark’s endurance and durability is as impressive as her vision and shooting touch.

Georgia’s defense deserves credit for forcing 17 turnovers, but Clark and her cohorts deserve credit for forcing 18 Georgia turnovers.

Clark deserves credit for getting her teammates involved, and her teammates deserve credit for making big shots at pivotal times.

Perhaps the most telling statistic from Sunday’s game is that Clark scored or assisted on 31 of Iowa’s 33 points in the second half.

Iowa made 12-of-28 shots from 3-point range and was led by Gabbie Marshall’s five threes on eight attempts.

Clark made 4-of-10 shots from behind the arc, and the ones she missed were all good shots that she often makes.

“I think, normally, I probably make a couple more shots,” Clark said. “I thought I had, you know, at least three open threes that usually go down for me. One in transition from Gabbie, another one in the corner, honestly, probably four more threes that were pretty wide open. But, you know, luckily I made a couple more in the second half. Sometimes that happens. That’s just how it goes. I’m still 4/10 from the three-point line. I’ll take that any day of the week, that’s 40 percent. Better than what most people do.

“Getting it into the paint was one of our goals. At times just froze up once we got it there because they were collapsing. And it seemed as if everybody was guarded. But, you know, they are long, they are athletic, they live on turnovers. That’s what they wanted to do. But no matter when we had a turnover, we never hung our head, we never felt defeated for ourselves. We just hustled back and, you know, the next play. Nobody blamed each other. I think that just speaks to this group that we have. And I think that’s going to carry us a long way.”

Clark has reached the point in her celebrated career in which teams goals are what she will be judged on the most because she already has accomplished so much from a statistical standpoint.

She has a unique skill set that allows her to be a prolific scorer and distributor.

The circumstances in Sunday’s game made Clark more of a distributor, and she was fine with that because she just wants to win.

Iowa sent a message with its performance on Sunday that it’ll take more than just limiting Clark’s scoring opportunities to beat this team.

All-Big Ten senior center Monika Czinano scored 20 points and was the beneficiary of some nifty passes from Clark.

There were times when Clark forced some passes to Czinano that led to turnovers. But Clark was taking what the defense gave her because she knew that was the best approach.

And ultimately, it worked.

“When I’m able to pass the ball and get over ten assists, I feel like it gives our team the balance we need to reach the goals that we want to achieve,” Clark said. “But also, it frustrates the other team. It’s hard to pick people who you are going to guard. And we have four people in double figures. So it’s a challenge, especially when you are playing a zone like that of who are you going to guard and who are you going to leave open?

Caitlin Clark is a superstar playing a team sport, and she understands what that means, as her performance showed on Sunday.

Star players are supposed to make those around them better, and Caitlin Clark certainly did that on Sunday with her vision, unselfishness and her refuse-to-lose mentality.

No disrespect to Abrahamson-Henderson, or to Diamond Battles, but Iowa prevailed on Sunday because it had the best player on the court who was willing to adjust her game to the circumstances.

Caitlin Clark trusted her teammates, and did everything she could to get them involved, and the reward for that trust is a trip to the Sweet 16.