fredbear said:

---

France fouled 5 fold the number of fouls called. They got away with it 80 percent of the time; a clear incentive to keep playing dirty.

---

The Gary Blair School of Thought

I have watched enough of Clark over the years, and particularly in this, her first WNBA year, to respect just how she has responded to the deliberate physicality designed to throw her off of her game. I would argue that she has experienced more physical play this year than most of the WNBA players. In fact, many of the players she has faced have openly celebrated their physical assaults on Clark, and officials have been slow to respond to it. This has been much commented on by observers of the WNBA to this point, and I do not expect it to change when the WNBA resumes play this week.

The lack of productivity of Chelsea Gray and Diana Taurasi, the latter starting in the early games and not even seeing the court in the final game and very little in the semi-final, calls into question the decision to bypass a player whose skill set and physical attributes mark her out as one of those who constitute the future of women's basketball.

As Dawn Staley, no great fan of the player who was largely responsible for sending her team home from the NCAA playoffs two years ago, admitted a couple of weeks ago, if they were choosing the team at that point, Clark would have been included. What changed her opinion? Presumably Clark's productivity in the face of the constant attempts to rough her up by constant full court pressure and double teams.

She sent LSU home this year by scoring over forty points as part of a triple double, leading Kim Mulkey to call her the best player she had ever seen. How could a player who had led the NCAA both in scoring and in assists for two straight years be a surprise when she moved up to the WNBA? Was it assumed that skills at that level were not transferable to professional basketball?

She had some of her best games against the strongest teams that her teams, Iowa and the Indiana Fever, played. Even against the WNBA Olympic team, playing for the All Stars, she scored in single digits but had assists in the double digits, while leading the upset of the team that would go on to extend the gold medal play in the Olympics. Like all great players, Clark finds a way to contribute even when her scoring is below her usual standard.

I have seen some great women players over the years, but none have so often made me sit up in my chair and say, "How did she do that?," as Caitlin Clark, and her passing is as often in that category as is her shooting.
She is a special player, one of the few non-Baylor players I would pay good money to watch.