Olympics Not Helping Ex Razorback’s Case for Team USA over Caitlin Clark

Caitlin Clark, Mike Neighbors, Arkansas basketball, WNBA, Olympics

On Monday, the USA national women’s basketball team delivered the lowest-attended basketball game of the Olympics so far. It’s simply the latest instance in a long line of reasons that folks are pining for Caitlin Clark to be on this Team USA after she was passed over a couple months ago.

Even a member of Team USA’s selection committee, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, seems to regret the omission now.

There are a handful of players one could argue should have their spot taken by Clark on this Olympics team. One of them, incidentally, is a former Razorback. Kelsey Plum played under Arkansas basketball coach Mike Neighbors at Washington and helped lead the Huskies to the 2016 Final Four. Four years later, Neighbors called upon her help again, this time as part of Arkansas’ staff. The Razorbacks brought her in as a graduate assistant in 2020 to “assist current and future Hogs with professional player transition.”

Plum, who already has an Olympic gold medal under her belt, is not quite contributing to this particular national team at the same level Clark would be. 

While Plum shot well in the opener vs Japan, such was not the case in the previous game – a U.S exhibition win over Germany. Plum was scoreless in six minutes off the bench, missing all three shots. Yes, she had three assists and pulled down one rebound, but almost assuredly Clark would be doing more than this.

To be clear, Kelsey Plum is a baller. The issue here is that, at 29 years old, she’s not the transcendent player that the 22-year-old Caitlin Clark is. She doesn’t move the needle for the game overall in the same way Clark does. That’s not a knock only against Plum – the same can be said for a lot of the current Team USA members.

Clark had to surpass Plum to become the living legend she is. It was Plum’s four-year record of 3,527 points that Clark broke on Feb. 15 against the Michigan Wolverines. She has since gone on to become a two-time WNBA champion with the Las Vegas Aces and a two-time All-star. 

Now, Plum is one of five guards that have been selected to represent Team USA in the Paris Olympics. Every other guard on the Team USA roster is back under the microscope for this apparent sporting travesty of the millennium. Citing her inexperience as a primary factor, the USA Basketball selection committee left Clark off the roster. She would have been the first rookie to ever make a Women’s Olympic team without any prior national team experience.

But it sounds like a different decision would be made if they got a do-over:

Who to Leave Off for Caitlin Clark?

So, if Caitlin Clark were to be added to the Team USA roster, which of the five guards would be left off? Here’s a side-by-side comparison of what they were doing in the WNBA:

NameStatsShooting Percentages
Caitlin Clark35.2 min., 17.1 pts., 5.8 reb., 8.2 ast., 1.5 stl., 0.8 blk., 5.6 TO40.5% FG, 32.7% 3PT, 89.1% FT
Chelsea Gray24.3 min., 7.3 pts., 2.8 reb., 4.8 ast., 0.6 stl., 0.7 blk., 2.3 TO39.0% FG, 24.0% 3PT, 73.9% FT
Sabrina Ionescu33.7 min., 19.8 pts., 4.4 reb., 6.1 ast., 1.0 stl., 0.3 blk., 2.8 TO42.4% FG, 35.6% 3PT, 90.9% FT
Jewell Loyd34.1 min., 20.1 pts., 4.6 reb., 4.1 ast., 1.4 stl., 0.2 blk., 2.3 TO36.2% FG, 26.1% 3PT, 86.9% FT
Kelsey Plum34.9 min., 18.4 pts., 2.2 reb., 4.7 ast., 0.9 stl., 0.0 blk., 2.3 TO41.0% FG, 35.9% 3PT, 85.7% FT
Diana Taurasi29.5 min., 16.1 pts., 4.7 reb., 2.6 ast., 0.7 stl., 0.3 blk., 2.0 TO40.1% FG, 36.3% 3PT, 87.2% FT

It’s worth noting that Clark was at least named an Olympic alternate and had a decent shot of playing for the team. One of those guards, Chelsea Gray, had been dealing with a foot injury suffered in last year’s WNBA Finals, but she recovered in time to start Team USA’s opening game.

Despite averaging the fewest points amongst the guards on this year’s team, Gray is an elite distributor. She ranked second in the WNBA last year with 7.3 assists per game and dished 13 in the win over Japan.

This is Plum’s Olympics debut in the 5 vs 5 and it comes after two full WNBA seasons in which she averaged more than 18.5 points. She’s having another solid year.

Loyd probably has the strongest statistical resume. She was on the roster for the Tokyo games and played 11 minutes in the gold medal match in which Team USA defeated Japan 90-75 for its seventh straight gold medal. She had a monster season last year, averaging 24.7 points, and had gotten off to the best start in terms of scoring amongst the aforementioned guards, averaging 20.3 points in 12 games this year. 

Sabrina Ionescu has had similar numbers in points, rebounds and assists across a 3-year span compared to Clark with about half the turnovers and brings the experience of having been on the 2022 World Cup gold-medal winning team. 

Taurasi is this year’s Sue Bird legacy selection. Playing in her sixth Olympics, the now 42-year old has had plenty to say about the budding young star. Clearly, in the twilight of her career, Taurasi is the shoe-in with her wealth of experience.

Tracking Back to Ex Hog Kelsey Plum

However, the WNBA is in a watershed moment. There is no replacement for the marketability and star power Caitlin Clark brings. Although USA Basketball would love to send Clark off to some smaller international tournament that hardly anyone watches in front of a few thousand fans to gain the experience that is supposedly required to play on the national team in the Olympics, the timing is such that there may never be a better chance than this to capitalize on such a boom in women’s college basketball.

If that means Clark should be on the team instead of a guard like Plum, numbers be damned, so be it, or “C’est la vie,” as Parisians may say. Who knows where all these players will be the next time the Olympics rolls around in 2028? We’ve seen phenoms fizzle out over four years. 

As the numbers indicate, Plum is more than qualified to make the team in her own right. But for the health of the game moving forward, one of them should have been the sacrificial lamb to allow the WNBA to capitalize on the momentum that it has never had in more than 25 years of existence. Again, c’est la vie. 

Caitlin-mania has taken the world by storm. All of the guards are under a Hawkeye’s watch during these Olympics and being scrutinized for their performances, including a former Razorback.

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