Iowa’s Caitlin Clark reacts after a 3-pointer throughout the second half of an NCAA Ladies’s Closing 4 semifinals basketball sport towards South Carolina on Friday in Dallas.

Darron Cummings/AP

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Darron Cummings/AP

Iowa’s Caitlin Clark reacts after a 3-pointer throughout the second half of an NCAA Ladies’s Closing 4 semifinals basketball sport towards South Carolina on Friday in Dallas.

Darron Cummings/AP

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DALLAS — Caitlin Clark tossed the ball excessive within the air because the clock ticked down, gave an enormous shout-out to her adoring followers after which took off on a gleeful gallop across the court docket.

Within the largest matchup of her life, the dazzling level guard from Iowa had executed all of it — poured in 41 factors to set a document for the highest-scoring NCAA Event semifinal, ended the proper season of South Carolina and, most significantly, put her Hawkeyes into the championship sport.

Clark overwhelmed the reigning champions with one other sensational present from begin to end, serving to Iowa cease the Gamecocks’ 42-game profitable streak 77-73 on Friday night time within the Closing 4.

“We had nothing to lose. I’ve all the boldness on this planet on this group, they usually imagine proper again in me, and that is all you want,” Clark mentioned. “All we do is imagine in each other and we love one another to demise, and that is what a real workforce is. If you’d like an instance of a workforce, that is what that is.”

The spectacular junior grew to become the primary girls’s participant to submit back-to-back 40-point performances within the NCAA Event. She now has the Hawkeyes in a spot they’ve by no means been in earlier than — one victory away from a nationwide championship.

They will must beat one other SEC workforce to try this as Iowa (31-6) will face LSU within the title sport on Sunday afternoon. The Tigers beat Virginia Tech within the different nationwide semifinal.

It is the Tigers’ first look within the title sport as Kim Mulkey grew to become the second coach to take two completely different groups to the championship sport.

“I like me some Caitlin Clark,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder mentioned. “We have been speaking about being mission-focused lots this 12 months, and we had a sport plan and these guys executed so nicely. That’s South Carolina we simply beat, people. Superb.”

Due to the riveting play of Clark and the historic 12 months by South Carolina, this was probably the most talked about and extremely anticipated matchups in girls’s Closing 4 historical past,

The sport lived as much as the hype surrounding it— the most effective participant vs. the most effective workforce — a lot to the delight of the sellout crowd of over 19,000 followers.

“Tonight confirmed how enjoyable girls’s basketball is,” Clark mentioned. “I am positive some individuals wished this was a sequence of seven video games.”

Coach Daybreak Staley and South Carolina (36-1) had stored on profitable since taking final 12 months’s title.

“I do not suppose we felt stress to win the sport, we simply did not carry out,” Staley mentioned. “And that hasn’t been us all season lengthy.”

“I do not suppose our gamers felt stress, every other pressures apart from eager to win one other basketball sport,” she mentioned.

This was Iowa’s first look within the Closing 4 in 30 years. The final time the Hawkeyes superior this far was 1993 below coach C. Vivian Stringer, whose workforce misplaced to Ohio State in time beyond regulation.

Clark wowed the group that included Harper Stribe, a younger fan of the workforce who has been battling most cancers. She was featured in a surprise video that knowledgeable the Hawkeyes’ star that she was the AP Participant of the 12 months.

Clark has created fairly a stir since going to school in her house state. She led the nation in scoring twice and final weekend had a sport for the ages, recording the primary 40-point triple-double in NCAA historical past to steer the Hawkeyes to the Closing 4.

Now she has them on the doorstep of extra historical past.

Trailing 59-55 coming into the fourth quarter, South Carolina scored the primary 5 factors to take the lead. Clark answered proper again with two deep 3-pointers and an help to Monika Czinano to present the Hawkeyes a 67-62 lead.

South Carolina received inside 69-68 on Raven Johnson’s 3-pointer earlier than Clark received a steal for a layup with 3:32 left. Neither workforce scored once more till star Aliyah Boston was fouled with 1:37 left. She made the second of two free throws.

Clark then scored one other layup on the opposite finish out of a timeout to make it a four-point sport. After a layup by Zia Cooke with 58 seconds left, the Hawkeyes ran the clock down with McKenna Warnock grabbing an enormous offensive rebound off a Clark miss with 18 seconds remaining.

Clark hit two free throws after South Carolina fouled her with 13.5 seconds left. They had been her thirty eighth and thirty ninth level, transferring her previous Nneka Ogwumike for essentially the most in a Closing 4 semifinal sport.

After a putback by Johnson with 9.9 seconds left received the Gamecocks inside 75-73, Clark sealed the sport with two extra free throws.

The loss ended an incredible season for the defending champion Gamecocks, who had been making an attempt to grow to be the tenth workforce to undergo a season unbeaten.

“It was bodily. You have to give them loads of credit score,” Clark mentioned. “They seem to be a large workforce, they’ve had an incredible 12 months, clearly so well-coached.”

Cooke led the Gamecocks with 24 factors. Slowed by foul bother, Boston had simply eight factors and 10 rebounds because the Hawkeyes packed the paint, overtly daring South Carolina to shoot from the skin. The protection appeared to bamboozle the Gamecocks, who completed 4 for 20 from behind the 3-point line. They could not reap the benefits of their 49-25 rebounding edge that included 26 offensive boards.

Clark grew to become the sixth participant to attain over 1,000 factors in a season. She joined former Hawkeyes star Megan Gustafson, breaking her faculty mark of 1,001. Villanova’s Maddy Siegrist additionally reached that milestone this season. Kelsey Plum, Jackie Stiles and Odyssey Sims had been the others to do it.