Hailey Van Lith Covering Caitlin Clark

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About

Hailey Van Lith Covering Caitlin Clark refers to memes and jokes about LSU basketball guard Hailey Van Lith struggling to defend Iowa star Caitlin Clark in the teams' Elite Eight meeting of the 2024 NCAA National Championship tournament. Clark scored 41 points in the game, the majority of which came with Van Lith defending her. The performance in early April 2024 led numerous social media users to make jokes at Van Lith's expense while criticizing LSU coaching for not adjusting their defensive strategy.

Origin

On April 1st, 2024, Iowa defeated LSU 94-87 to advance to the Final Four of the 2024 NCAA Women's Basketball Championship tournament.^[1] Iowa's star player Caitlin Clark, 6' tall, provided the majority of the team's offense, scoring 41 points on 13-29 shooting. For the majority of the game, Clark was guarded by Hailey Van Lith, 5'7", a strong player who won gold medals for the United States at the Youth National level.^[2]

Despite her pedigree, she seemed badly outmatched by Clark throughout the evening and was often tasked with guarding her one-on-one throughout the night (compilation of Clark scoring on Van Lith tweeted by @banthecharge^[3] shown below).

After the game, LSU coach Kim Mulkey defended her decision to keep Van Lith guarding Clark by saying that no player had a chance to guard Clark.^[4]

Spread

During the game and afterward, social media users, particularly on Twitter, made memes about Van Lith's struggles guarding Clark. One clip posted on April 2nd, 2024, showing Van Lith shrugging in frustration after Clark hit a basket spread widely (tweet by @_MarcusD3_ shown below).

Users posted a mix of reaction images and videos to joke about Van Lith's frustration. For example, on April 1st, 2024, Twitter user @JomiAdeniran^[5] posted a reaction image of Drake looking scared to joke about Van Lith's performance, gaining over 5,900 retweets and 60,000 likes in one day (shown below, left).

The same day, user @MLaw_1^[6] posted a Quote Card featuring Larry Bird to joke about Van Lith guarding Clark, gaining over 10,000 retweets and 72,000 likes in the same timeframe (shown below, right).

Amidst the memeing on Van Lith, Barstool Sports argued that the widespread joking at her expense was proof that women's basketball was becoming legitimized in the eyes of fans.^[7] They wrote, "…it felt like everyone in America that had a television turned on was watching that game. And there may be no better sign for the growing popularity of women's basketball than the fact that social media was flooded with memes like it was the NBA Finals."

Some users online, particularly on the /r/nbacirclejerk subreddit, also began using the nickname "Hailey Van Brick" for Van Lith following the game.^[8]^[9]