IOWA CITY — Anyone who has visited Carver-Hawkeye Arena this season has seen the banner rolled up in the rafters, waiting to be unveiled at the perfect time. No one can see what’s on it. But everyone attached to Iowa women’s basketball knows what’s on it.

It comes down Feb. 2.

Caitlin Clark’s No. 22 will be retired on, by no coincidence, 2-2-25, the university announced Wednesday. The ceremony will coincide with arguably the Hawkeyes’ biggest home game of the season, as JuJu Watkins and USC will be in the building to watch Clark’s legacy further cemented in Iowa women’s basketball lore.

“I’m forever proud to be a Hawkeye and Iowa holds a special place in my heart that is bigger than just basketball,” Clark said in a school release. “It means the world to me to receive this honor and to celebrate it with my family, friends and alumni. It will be a great feeling to look up in the rafters and see my jersey alongside those that I’ve admired for so long.”

It was announced in April at the team’s end-of-year celebration that Clark’s jersey would be retired in the near future, a fitting announcement as Iowa honored another team reaching the national title game. After proudly proclaiming she’d take Iowa to its first Final Four in three decades, Clark did that twice and then some with a bevy of unforgettable heroics and accolades.

Atop the list is her unmatched scoring prowess. In a 17-day span from Feb. 15 to March 3, Clark broke Kelsey Plum’s all-time women’s NCAA Division I scoring record, passed AIAW legend Lynette Woodard for the major college scoring record, then passed LSU’s Pete Maravich for most career points in Division I history.

More: Caitlin Clark named Time magazine’s 2024 Athlete of the Year

Clark is a two-time recipient of the Wooden, Naismith, Wade, Ann Meyers Drysdale, Honda Cup and AAU Sullivan awards. The two-time consensus national player of the year led Iowa to back-to-back national championship games (2023-24) and three Big Ten Tournament titles (2022-24). Clark also won the Nancy Lieberman Point Guard Award and Dawn Staley Award three times each.

Clark is the only player in NCAA Division I men’s or women’s basketball history to lead her conference in scoring and assists four consecutive seasons. In her senior year, Clark led the nation in 10 different offensive categories, and broke the women’s NCAA Tournament scoring record. She’s since been drafted No. 1 overall to the Indiana Fever, won WNBA rookie of the year and was named TIME Magazines athlete of the year.

“Caitlin Clark has not only redefined excellence on the court but has also inspired countless young athletes to pursue their dreams with passion and determination,” Iowa AD Beth Goetz said in a statement. “Her remarkable achievements have left an indelible mark on the University of Iowa and the world of women’s basketball.

“Retiring her number is a testament to her extraordinary contributions and a celebration of her legacy that will continue to inspire future generations. Hawkeye fans are eager to say thank you for so many incredible moments.”

More: How to buy tickets for Iowa vs USC

Dargan Southard is a sports trending reporter and covers Iowa athletics for the Des Moines Register and HawkCentral.com. Email him at msouthard@gannett.com or follow him on Twitter at @Dargan_Southard.

UNCASVILLE, Conn. — No. 4 UConn sank a program-record 20 3-pointers in a 101-68 rout of Iowa State on Tuesday night in the second game of the Basketball Hall of Fame Women’s Showcase doubleheader.

The Huskies comfortably surpassed their previous season high of 14 3-pointers, converting 58.8% of their attempts (20 of 34) against the Cyclones, who were 8 of 25 from deep.

“Basketball is a make-shot, miss-shot game, and they made a lot of them, and that’s to their credit. They’re a great team,” Iowa State coach Bill Fennelly said. “They play the game the right way. So just nothing we could do to stop it.

“The way they shot the ball was unlike something I’ve seen in a long time.”

UConn sophomore Ashlynn Shade had seven 3-pointers en route to 27 points, both career highs.

“I really didn’t expect this. I thought we would have a difficult time,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “I said, ‘We need to win the 3-point battle by quite a few because they make nine a game.’

“When the basket looks big early on, the basket just gets bigger as the game goes on, and for some players, they make their first two or three, they think they can make the next 23.”

Shade was 6 of 6 from beyond the arc in the first quarter, scoring 20 points.

“It means everything to be a part of something that’s so big, being part of UConn history,” said Shade, who finished 7 of 10 from deep. “It’s just super surreal.”

The Huskies also got a quintet of 3s from freshman Sarah Strong (5 of 9, career-high 29 points) and senior Paige Bueckers (5 of 7, 27 points).

It marked the first time in the past 25 seasons that UConn had three players with at least 25 points in the same game. No other Division I team has had a trio of players do that this season.

Bueckers, Shade and Strong are also the first Division I trio with at least 25 points and five 3-pointers apiece in the same game over the past 25 seasons.

Freshman Allie Ziebell notched UConn’s 19th 3-pointer to set the program record (previously set in 2014-15 and 2008-09) with 3:19 left in the game, before classmate Morgan Cheli made No. 20 with 2:04 to go.

“It would have been a bad game of H-O-R-S-E the way they were knocking them in,” Fennelly said.

Added Shade: “It was just super cool to be a part of and just such a fun game to play.”

The 3-point outburst from Shade in particular was welcomed, giving the Huskies a third major scorer. They’ve missed that recently with guard Azzi Fudd sidelined the past three games because of a knee sprain.

“I think we’re going to need three legitimate big-time scorers the entire season,” Auriemma said. “Where they come from, it really doesn’t matter to me, but hopefully we’ll have at least four maybe when Azzi gets back.”

UConn next faces No. 7 USC on Saturday in Hartford, Connecticut, in its second top-10 matchup this month. It lost to then-No. 8 Notre Dame last week.

No. 5 LSU beat Seton Hall 91-64 in the opener of Women’s Showcase earlier Tuesday.

Information from ESPN Research was used in this report.

Iowa Auditor Rob Sand disputed claims made by Republican leaders that his office was aware of a coding error that led to a misallocation of court debt funds years before taking action on the issue.

Sand held a news conference Tuesday about his report on the Iowa Judicial Branch, which found that $27.5 million in court debt receipts had been misallocated due to a coding error. The report had followed up on letters sent to the auditor’s office by House Speaker Pat Grassley and Iowa Department of Management Director Kraig Paulsen that more than $53 million of these funds had been misallocated — an amount Sand said was inaccurate.

In an October letter to Sand, Grassley wrote that the auditor’s office had been alerted of a financial irregularity by the Department of Transportation in 2022, but that these issues were not mentioned in the judicial branch audits for fiscal years 2021 and 2022.

“I am writing to gain an understanding from you as to why your office has taken no action since being made aware of these drastic issues at least two years ago,” Grassley wrote. “The State Auditor’s office exists for this very purpose. When you are made aware of misallocated funds by a branch of government, it is your duty to Iowans to investigate, alert the public, and seek to rectify the issue. Your inaction in this case is baffling and inexcusable. If there is any other explanation why it appears that the taxpayer’s watchdog was sleeping on the job, I would be very interested to hear it.”

Sand said the auditor’s office has been in contact with officials from the state judicial branch and DOT multiple times after being notified of the issue in October 2022, and that the office remained in contact with the judicial branch in conducting internal and independent investigations into the issue.

According to the auditor’s report, there were seven state funds that were under-allocated because of the error from fiscal years 2021 through 2024 — the largest being the Road Use Tax Fund, which was under-allocated by more than $10.4 million, and the Victim Compensation Fund by $7.2 million. In the same time period, the state general fund received an over-allocation of $27.5 million, in addition to the SOS Revolving Fund being over-allocated $90,174 and the Jury Witness Fund by $74,166.

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird released a statement in October criticizing the auditor’s office for failing to catch the misallocation related to the Victim Compensation Fund that goes toward services like sexual assault examinations, medical reimbursements and counseling.

“No domestic violence victim should have to stay with their abuser because they cannot afford to leave,” Bird said. “The State’s self-proclaimed ‘taxpayer watchdog’ failed at the most basic job of being an auditor: conducting an audit. Crime victims should not have to worry about whether victim services will be there when they need them.”

But Sand pushed back against Bird’s characterization of the issue, saying that the underfunded government accounts never ran out of money when they were impacted by the error.

Sand asked for an apology to his staff for the criticism of the auditor’s office over this subject, and making it a “political” issue.

“I’m asking again, the people who distort the facts around this issue for political gain to publicly apologize to our staff — I would settle for a private apology to our staff that works on these issues,” Sand said. “These accountants and the auditors in this office, they work long hours. It is a difficult profession to be in right now, … Our employees know that their families and their friends are seeing these headlines, and they know that they’re doing their job, they know that they are doing good quality work. But because of these attacks, they have to deal with it. They shouldn’t have to, and they deserve an apology.”

Paulsen, speaking with reporters Tuesday, said although the funds impacted by the error retained money despite the misallocation, it does not mean services — and their recipients in the state — were not affected by the lack of funds.

“You don’t spend your bank account down to zero every month, and neither do state entities funded by court debt,” Paulsen said. “When the funds run low, you cut back and so do state entities. Have citizens been harmed? That’s a question the Legislature should ask.”

While Sand said his office has never had staff with the ability to review coding to check for problems like in this case, Paulsen said the fact the misallocation occurred because of a coding error should not have prevented the office from being able to identify the funding irregularities.

“Don’t get bogged down in thinking auditing has anything to do with coding or programming a computer,” Paulsen said. “… [I]f that was the case, that you had to understand some computer language to audit, then how does the auditor of state do a single audit? How do they go from agency to agency? … There’s still a few very small communities who use paper, but otherwise, there’s no government in the state of Iowa that doesn’t have their financials in the computer system. So if that’s a limitation, how do they … do any of their audits? And the truth is, they do, because it’s not a limitation.”

The programming errors that led to the funds misallocations were found to have likely began after changes were made to the judicial branch’s information technology system for the process for distributing judicial fees and fines to government programs in 2020 and 2021, as directed by the Iowa Legislature.

While the error has been fixed moving forward, the misallocation that occurred in previous years cannot be fixed through administrative action, although the Legislature could take action when lawmakers reconvene in January 2025.

State Court Administrator Robert Gast said in a letter Dec. 6 that the judicial branch has implemented “new programming to correct programming errors in its case management system” as of Nov. 22, 2024, including retroactive corrections to distributions dating back to July 1, 2024. It has also contracted with a third party to review programming changes made to the branch’s IT system, is working with the state auditor “to set up an engagement to review the financial findings and verify that the over and under allocation numbers and the funds impacted as calculated by JBIT are accurate” and is developing an internal process to audit future programming changes.

“The branch cannot move funds that were misallocated in prior fiscal years,” Gast wrote. “We are interested and willing to work with all court debt stakeholders to correct all misallocations from FY21 through FY24.”