Cooper DeJean defends claim he could beat Caitlin Clark 1-on-1, reveals Clark's response

Cooper DeJean is a very confident athlete, even when it comes to playing basketball against Caitlin Clark.

DeJean’s recent comments went viral when he said he could beat Clark in a one-on-one game. Heck, the Philadelphia Eagles even posted DeJean admitting Clark would beat him in a close game, “if” she did.

DeJean joined Kay Adams on her show Up and Adams to explain his side of the “beef”:

“I mean, I was really just answering the question, but obviously, you know, Caitlin’s a special player,” DeJean said. “She’s done so much for women’s basketball as well and the University of Iowa in general. So I’ve had nothing but respect for her. She took a shot back at me after she texted me and she said didn’t think that I could beat her. I’ll let her say that but yeah, I mean, I think it’d be fun though if we got to play each other.”

Adams asked DeJean if he actually thought he could beat her, to which he said yes. The host, when asked by the Eagles rookie: “you don’t think I could do it?” She said “no.”

That’s when the Up and Adams crew started playing DeJean’s high school basketball highlights, which delighted Adams.

“I can jump a little bit, obviously as you can see from these highlights,” DeJean said. “I got a little bit of a jump shot too, not as much as shown in here but I really wanted to play basketball coming into high school. I wanted to play basketball in college, but it didn’t work out. I stuck with football. Football was probably the better option for me.”

It certainly seems like it considering he was a second round pick by Philadelphia.

“Caitlin wrote back to you and said, ‘No chance.’ So when are we playing this out,” Adams said. “When is this happening?”

Currently, there’s no date set between DeJean and Clark battling it out on the hardwood. DeJean has Eagles camp to worry about while Clark is set to being her rookie year with the Indiana Fever.

“I don’t know. She’s pretty busy right now,” DeJean responded. “So I don’t know. We’ll get to that.”

Regardless of his basketball talent, DeJean has a lot of football talent, as Clark does basketball. To-be-determined what she could do on the gridiron.

The Eagles expect a lot from their second round pick. The All-American finished his Iowa career with 120 total tackles, 85 solo tackles, five for loss, seven interceptions and three touchdowns. He also took back 31 punts for 406 yards and a touchdown, averaging 13.1 yards per return.