Iowa's Caitlin Clark Declares for 2024 WNBA Draft After Breaking WCBB Scoring Record

Caitlin Clark's historic college career is ending.

The Iowa star announced Thursday that she's declaring for the 2024 WNBA draft.

Clark leads the country in scoring (32.2 points) and is also averaging 7.4 rebounds and 8.7 assists per contest. She's shooting 46.9 percent from the field and 39.5 percent from beyond the arc.

The West Des Moines, Iowa, native was part of the last class that could take advantage of an additional year of eligibility the NCAA granted amid the COVID-19 pandemic. As the 2023-24 season unfolded, she was noncommittal when it came to her future.

UConn star Paige Bueckers already confirmed she's returning to UConn. Stanford's Cameron Brink hedged when asked about her status for next season, and LSU's Angel Reese seemed to be doing the same.

The Indiana Fever, who have the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 WNBA draft, were faced with a doomsday scenario where the consensus best player in her draft class and a potential franchise cornerstone could slip through their grasp.

At the end of the day, leaving Iowa always appeared to be the likely decision for Clark.

The 6'0" guard has little else to prove with the Hawkeyes. She helped guide them to their first national championship game appearance in 2023, and she's only 18 points away from passing LSU's Pete Maravich as the all-time leading scorer in Division I history.

The extent to which Clark was financially incentivized to stay in college has often been exaggerated as well. Sure, she will only earn $76,535 as a rookie thanks to the WNBA's wage scale, but the endorsement deals she signed as a college athlete aren't going to suddenly disappear entirely.

There was a time in women's basketball when a player's popularity peaked in college, and all but a select few would largely fade into anonymity upon reaching the WNBA. That's no longer true when the league and women's sports writ large are getting more exposure than ever.

Clark will probably feel she has unfinished business if this year's Hawkeyes fall short of winning a title. The benefits of making the leap to the WNBA now were nonetheless impossible to ignore.

As a draft prospect, the totality of Clark's skills cannot be overstated. In January, The Next's Em Adler, Hunter Cruse and Lincoln Shafer ranked the top prospects in league history and ranked her fourth behind Candace Parker, Lauren Jackson and Breanna Stewart.

"Every now and then, a basketball player comes along that is unlike anything we have ever seen before," their evaluation said. "A singular offensive engine with basically no weaknesses on that end of the ball, Caitlin Clark has been one of the best players in college basketball since the moment she arrived in Iowa City.

"Her combination of on-ball skills and off-ball utility compares only to legends of the game like Stephen Curry and Diana Taurasi, and her defense quietly improved across her first three collegiate seasons."

A adjustment period is inevitable for Clark when she hits the next level. She's attempted 22.6 shots per game this season and maintained a 40.4 percent usage rate, per Her Hoop Stats.

Assuming she lands on the Fever, she'll be sharing the floor with 2023 All-Star Kelsey Mitchell and reigning Rookie of the Year Aliyah Boston. She won't be running the show in Indianapolis to the same degree she was in Iowa City.

That's to say nothing of the general difficulty of going from college to the WNBA. The transition is typically tougher for guards because they're responsible for facilitating the offense and are left on an island defensively with greater regularity.

Clark should find her footing eventually, and the Fever couldn't have hoped for a better complement to Boston stylistically. Indiana is screaming out for a playmaker after averaging the second-fewest assists (18.0) and finishing last in assist rate (59.7 percent) this past season, per WNBA.com.

With Clark and Boston, the Fever will have the brightest young tandem in the league, one that should propel the franchise to great heights.