The top story going into March Madness this year isn’t coming out of Durham or Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It also isn’t coming out of Lexington, Kentucky, or Lawrence, Kansas. The biggest storylines in college basketball this season are coming from the women’s side of the game, and the most popular figure is Iowa superstar guard Caitlin Clark.
Clark gets comparisons to Steph Curry, but her game perhaps more mirrors Trae Young with her ability to make flashy passes and average nearly nine assists per game. Her fiery attitude and questionable on-court antics make her a must-watch villain for rival fans and an American darling to modern-day basketball followers fixated on how aesthetically pleasing her highlights can look. In her final regular season home game, she brought out Kevin Miles, the actor better known as Jake from State Farm, basketball legend Maya Moore, and Travis Scott, the superstar rapper and fellow celebrity face of Nike. On senior day, a free throw pushed Clark past LSU legend Pete Maravich for the most total career points in Division I history as the basketball world crowned a new scoring champ.
CONGRATS @CaitlinClark22 on becoming the All-Time leading scorer!! 🪣🪣🪣🪣🪣🪣🪣🪣🪣🪣🪣🪣🪣. 🙏🏾🫡👑
— LeBron James (@KingJames) March 3, 2024
Except Clark isn’t actually the all-time scoring champion of college basketball.
From 1975-79, Pearl Moore, a Black woman who is not related to Maya, mostly played at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina. She played eight games at Anderson Junior College because Francis Marion didn’t have its women’s program ready for basketball when Moore first got there.
In her eight games of JUCO action, Moore scored a total of 177 points, included in her career total because junior colleges regularly competed against four-year universities in the 1970s. Then she played a full season at FMU, eventually tallying 127 total games at Francis Marion. Her total of 4,061 points over 135 games still stands at the top of the record books. For reference, as of March 12 and before her final NCAA Tournament, Clark has 3,771 points in 133 career games. Before Clark’s achievement this season, Moore’s accomplishments had been forgotten in wide-ranging basketball discussions because women didn’t play under the NCAA back then; they played under the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. Still, Moore became the third South Carolinian to be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2021.
Recently, Moore spoke to rolling out about her being the Queen scorer of college basketball and finally receiving her long-awaited recognition.
What has it been like to receive these flowers over the past couple of months?
It feels good. But, Rashad, I felt like I’ve already gotten my flowers.
I really do. Whether it’s said or not, the flowers have already been presented to me.
You all didn’t have the three-point line back then?
No three-point line, and we played with the same ball the guys played with.
How did you score that many points in those circumstances?
That’s the only thing we had, man. Had to use what you had.
With no three-point line, three-point plays are the only way you could score that many points in a single possession. What was the key to you finishing through contact so often?
Either they didn’t want me to score or force the issue. So, I forced the issue and got fouled.
My coach Sylvia [Hatchell] said I used to wait on people so I could get the and-one.
When you look at basketball now, especially in high school, college, they’re [running] full speed and you know what you want to do when you get to the basket, but they don’t know what you want to do. They’re probably thinking they’re going to block the shot, and you’ve got to protect yourself. So that’s what I was doing.
I was trying to protect myself more because I remember one time in high school, I was with Wilson High School, and we were playing Mayo High School. I was a freshman or sophomore, and I remember they stole the ball, and I was trying to catch up to them. She jump-stopped, and I jumped over her head. I don’t know how I didn’t hurt myself or how I did it, but I do recall jumping over her … you really don’t have control when you’re sprinting on the floor like that.
Did anyone reach out to you when Kelsey Plum was announced as the all-time college scoring champion in 2017?
Not at all.
Why do you think you’re getting attention now? Is it because Caitlin’s so popular?
Caitlin just broke the threshold.
What do you think about the greatest of all-time debates?
I think people need to study the history of stuff they want to talk about … my nephew recently called and said he got into an argument about all-time leading scorer and how one guy said, “Well, they didn’t play anybody back then.”
When I was in college, we played the University of South Carolina, Clemson, and College of Charleston. Those were AIAW Division I schools. We competed with those guys and probably won half the time.
