On Friday, Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes will battle Paige Bueckers and the UConn Huskies in RocketMortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland for a place in the NCAA National Championship game. On Thursday, the two teams were in the Cleveland Cavaliers’ home arena for practice sessions ahead of their Final Four matchup.
Advertisement
During warmups, one reporter captured a hilarious conversation between Clark and teammate, Jada Gyamfi. As the duo stretched, the latter said, “I had no idea the Cleveland Cavaliers played here.” An astonished Clark hilariously remarked, “Do you live under a rock?” Gyamfi snapped back and asked her teammate, “, “OK, do you know every arena where every NBA team plays?” Clark responded, “Why else would we be here?”
The Arena has been the Cavaliers’ home stadium since it opened in 1994, with the franchise being the longest tenant of the near-20,000-seater stadium. Clark’s astonishment at her teammate’s lack of ball knowledge is hilarious and certainly justified. The NCAA Tournament is a marquee event and, unsurprisingly, they’d use the best facilities available for the Final Four stage.
Gyamfi perhaps believed that the Cavaliers wouldn’t lend their home stadium to the NCAA amidst the NBA regular season. Regardless, she now knows that she’ll be playing in the same arena where the Cavaliers have contested five NBA Finals.
Caitlin Clark looking for a storybook ending to her college career
The 2024 NCAA Tournament will be Caitlin Clark’s final March Madness run with the Hawkeyes. She has already declared for the 2024 WNBA Draft and is expected to be the first overall pick. Clark and the Hawkeyes made it to the final last year but were upstaged by the LSU Tigers. They avenged their loss in last year’s final with a win over the Tigers in the Elite Eight stage of this tournament. But alas, there is no trophy for settling an old rivalry.
The UConn Huskies stand in the Hawkeyes’ way of a second straight appearance in the NCAA National Championship game. The 11-time winners won four straight titles between 2013 and 2016 and made it to the final in 2022, per USA Today. Clark and the Hawkeyes will look to deny the most successful program in women’s basketball history another shot at adding to their national championship tally.
