New Caitlin Clark book charts her rise to basketball fame

A moment in 2023 that still haunts the hearts of IU basketball faithful also serves as the launching point for the newest book about Caitlin Clark.

In a late-season game, Clark buried a three point dagger for the University of Iowa to knock off #2 Indiana University, further serving notice of a new era in basketball – and fully convincing columnist Christine Brennan that we were all watching history in the making.

“Clark launched a wild shot from a ridiculous position, off-balance, left leg askew,” Brennan writes in the first pages of “On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports.”

“It was crazy and almost laughable. There’s no way on earth something like that could go in – until it did.”

Brennan points to it as the moment she understood that Clark’s talent would soon become much more than merely a basketball story.

Her siblings all attended IU. Brennan indicates that, even in defeat, the moment transfixed them all.

“You watch it, and you know what you do? You want to watch a replay and another replay,” Brennan shared in a book tour visit with WISH-TV’s Daybreak. “And you kind of can’t get it out of your head. And we’re all texting about it, and other friends are texting. ‘Did you see that?!’”

Brennan’s book covers Clark’s rise through the college record books, on-court rivalries that shaped public perception, Clark’s professional start in Indiana, the reaction of other players in the WNBA, and Brennan’s belief that the league botched its biggest opportunity.

Brennan also blisters USA Basketball, calling one decision in particular the worst she has seen in four decades of sports coverage.

“I realize she’s a basketball player, absolutely, but she’s really an entertainer," Brennan says of Clark's star power. "When she’s chucking it from the parking lot and it’s going in, that’s where grandmothers are in the produce section talking to their friends about how they just saw that basketball player.”

Scott Sander

WISH-TV

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