Lisa Bluder calls out NCAA for not recognizing Lynette Woodard's scoring record

As far as Lisa Bluder is concerned, Caitlin Clark really broke the scoring record for women’s college basketball against Minnesota on Wednesday night, passing former Kansas great Lynette Woodard and her 3649 career points.

And the Iowa women’s basketball head coach made it clear how she feels about Woodard being sequestered to a small corner of the sport’s history. The NCAA doesn’t officially recognize Woodard’s record, set in the 1970s and 80s the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) was governing the sport.

After Clark surpassed Woodard’s mark — she passed the official NCAA women’s scoring mark earlier in February — Bluder was unabashed in her criticism of the NCAA’s record keeping.

“I want to talk about Caitlin, obviously, because tonight is the night of the real record,” Bluder said in her postgame remarks. “To me, for the AIAW record that Lynette Woodard held, that was the real one. 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. There’s no reason why that should not be the true record. And at a school like Iowa that has been so rich in AIAW history, I just want to make sure we acknowledge Lynette’s accomplishments in the game of basketball. But, congratulations to Caitlin for being the true basketball leader in points tonight.”

And having played basketball during the AIAW days and during the earliest years of the NCAA governing women’s college basketball, the matter is evidently meaningful to Bluder on a personal level, too.

Bluder was asked why she thinks the NCAA doesn’t count AIAW records as official and why the association seems unwilling to change tack. Her best guess was quite simple, and she’s hopeful that bringing some attention to the matter will perhaps make NCAA leaders change their tune.

“I mean, ignorance,” Bluder said. “Why would we not recognize the women that played in the ’70s and ’80s? They got it all started. They were the foundation for what we’re doing right now. And to me, it makes no sense. But maybe, maybe the NCAA will realize that now. Maybe it’ll be brought to their attention and they will start recognizing those women that played in the ’70s and remember, they played with a larger basketball and no 3-point line, either.”