The Indiana Fever picked Iowa's Caitlin Clark on Monday first overall in the 2024 WNBA draft, marking a widely-expected next step in Clark's meteoric career.
Clark, who was a senior in Iowa's program this year, has broken record after record, most recently becoming the highest scorer in major women's college basketball history and shortly afterward becoming the all-time NCAA scoring leader when she broke a record of 3,617 career points that Pete Maravich held for 54 years.
Women's college basketball as a whole has also seen a resurgence, in which the women's final drew more TV viewers than the men's final for the first time ever.
Los Angeles picked Cameron Brink from Stanford at No. 2.
Chicago selected South Carolina's Kamilla Cardoso at No. 3.
Other notable players made headlines, such as UConn's Aaliyah Edwards and LSU's Angel Reese, who went 6th and 7th in the first round, respectively. Clark's Iowa teammate Kate Martin was also picked by the Las Vegas Aces in the 2nd round, 18th overall.
While Clark's entry into the WNBA will give the league a boost, so too will the other college stars entering the professional ranks.
"Certainly we have a star coming into this draft kind of unlike anyone we’ve seen coming into the draft, in terms of popularity and how many people are excited about watching her play in the WNBA and watching on television in terms of Caitlin Clark, but of course there are some other players that people are really excited about thinking they could be long-term pros and potential long-term All-Stars in this league," said former league All-Star and current ESPN analyst Rebecca Lobo.
While these players have drawn attention to their play on the court, they have also developed brands off the court thanks to social media and the fact college players can now profit off their name, image and likeness.
"Caitlin is kind of in a world of her own, but I don’t know that we have seen this kind of excitement across the board," Lobo said. "Angel Reese has a massive following. Cameron Brink has a large following of people, whether it’s following them on social media or following them throughout the course of their college career.
"We have women coming into the draft this year who people are very much aware of and eager to see how their game is going to translate at this level, and I don’t know if we have — even Caitlin aside because of how NIL has changed things, I don’t know that we’ve ever seen an entire class that has this much attention off the floor that they are also going to bring to their on-court performance here in the W."
This year's WNBA Draft marks the first in eight years where fans were present in person.
University of Iowa to retire Caitlin Clark's No. 22 jersey
"That number holds a lot of weight, far beyond my name, and I guess I'm just really grateful," Clark said after the announcement.
