It's official: Caitlin Clark is the most popular player in college basketball this year

It's official: Caitlin Clark is the most popular player in college basketball this season.

The Iowa star was correctly identified as an NCAA athlete by nearly half the population, 47%, in a Seton Hall Sports Poll, a figure that rose to 60% for sports fans and 69% for college sports fans. Perhaps more telling, when poll participants were given the names of 10 college basketball players, five men and five women, Clark had more than twice the name recognition of any other athlete — and four times the name recognition of the top men's player.

Clark's name was recognized by 44% of the general population while LSU's Angel Reese was second, at 18%. Clark's name recognition rose to 58% among sports fans and 65% among NCAA fans.

In a sign of the growing popularity of the women's game, four of the six most-recognized athletes were women's players: Clark and Reese, with UConn's Paige Bueckers fifth (10%) and Stanford's Cameron Brink sixth (9%). Hunter Dickinson of Kansas and Purdue's Zach Edey, both at 11%, were the only men's players in the top five.

Those positions didn't change even when the respondents identified as NCAA fans or sports fans.

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"Caitlin Clark is carrying the March Madness brand this year,” said Daniel Ladik, chief methodologist of the poll, which was conducted with YouGov.

That doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who's watched college basketball this season. Iowa's games, both home and away, were the hottest ticket, and the country watched with rapt attention as Clark became college basketball's leading scorer. Her past four games drew more than a million viewers each, with the regular-season finale where she passed Pete Maravich for the scoring record and the Big Ten tournament title game both averaging more than 3 million viewers.

The Seton Hall poll of 1,519 respondents was conducted from last Friday through Monday. It has a margin of error of plus/minus 3 percent.

Email Nancy Armour at [email protected] and follow her on social media @nrarmour.