Iowa women's basketball coach Lisa Bluder drops truth bomb on Caitlin Clark breaking 'real' scoring record

Iowa sensation Caitlin Clark broke the NCAA women’s college basketball held by Washington’s Kelsey Plum on February 15. Thirteen days later, she broke the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) scoring record held by Kansas star Lynette Woodard, which Clark’s coach, Lisa Bluder, calls the “real” scoring record.

“The AIAW record that Lynette Woodard held, that was the real one,” Bluder told reporters after the Hawkeyes’ 108-60 win over Minnesota. “There's no reason why that should not be the true record. At a school like Iowa, that has been so rich in AIAW history, I just make sure we acknowledge Lynette's accomplishments in the game of basketball.”

Lisa Bluder continued by taking shots at the NCAA, which lists the AIAW records and championships separately from the NCAA records. The AIAW governed women’s college sports parallel to the NCAA — which then only governed men’s college athletics — from 1971 to 1982.

“For some reason, the NCAA does not want to recognize the basketball that was played prior to 1982, and that’s wrong. We played basketball back then! They just don’t want to recognize it, and that hurts the rest of us that were playing at that time,” Bluder, who played at Northern Iowa from 1979-83, said.

Lynette Woodard played for Kansas from 1977 to 1981, racking up 3,649 points, which was still 77 ahead of Kelsey Plum’s 3,572 points.

Now, Iowa star Caitlin Clark owns all the scoring records for women’s college basketball, no matter which umbrella the players played under. With just one game to go in her college career, Clark sets her sights on the overall NCAA scoring mark held by LSU’s “Pistol” Pete Maravich with 3,667 points.

The Hawkeyes sharpshooter needs just 18 points to break The Pistol’s mark and is averaging 32.2 points per game. Iowa takes on No. 2 Ohio State on Sunday, March 3, in the team’s regular-season finale.