Fever All-Star Caitlin Clark breaks WNBA rookie assist record

August 19, 2024

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Fever All-Star Caitlin Clark breaks WNBA rookie assist record

Caitlin Clark continues to establish herself as one of the best passers in WNBA history.

Clark already holds the record for assists in a single game (19, which she set in the final game before the All-Star break), but she’s back in the record books. With her third assist on Sunday against the Seattle Storm, Clark set a new record for total assists in a single season by a rookie.

Clark passed Ticha Penicheiro, who scored 225 runs for the Sacramento Monarchs in 1998.

The WNBA season was shorter during Penicheiro’s rookie year, but the Portuguese guard needed 30 games to reach 225. Clark surpassed that mark in Indiana’s 28th game of the season, with 12 games left to put that total out of reach for future freshmen.

Records are meant to be broken…it shows growth and evolution. I can’t think of a better player to break it!! Congratulations @CaitlinClark22

— Ticha Penicheiro (@TichaPenicheiro) August 18, 2024

After a relatively slow start to the season — at least by the productive standards she set at Iowa — Clark has been on a roll of late. In the last 16 games through Sunday (after that brutal opening stretch of 11 games in 20 days), Clark is averaging a near-double-double with 18.9 points and 9.6 assists per game.

She opened the second half of the season with 29 points and 10 assists in a win over the Phoenix Mercury and their three Olympians. Clark followed that up with 23 points, nine assists and five rebounds on 9 of 19 shooting in the Indiana Fever’s 92-75 win over the Storm.

Clark leads the WNBA in assists per game (8.3) and could break Connecticut Suns forward Alyssa Thomas’ single-season assists record if she averages 7.1 the rest of the way. New York Liberty guard Courtney Vandersloot’s record of 10 assists per game (set during the 22-game bubble season in 2020) still hangs in the air, but it’d be foolish to bet that Clark won’t reach it at some point in her budding career.

The Fever are 13-15, seventh in the WNBA standings with the top eight teams making the playoffs. They have already matched their win total from a year ago and have beaten the two teams directly ahead of them in the standings to start the second half of the season. Indiana has the second-easiest schedule remaining through its final 12 games.