It doesn’t take long during a conversation with KU freshman Libby Fandel to understand that she considers herself to have a pretty solid all-around game.
It’s not cocky. It’s confidence.
It’s not arrogance. It’s accurate.
Come to think of it, it sounds an awful lot like Caitlin Clark, arguably the best-known women’s basketball player on the planet at the moment.
And while Fandel will be the first to tell you that she has a lonnnnggg way to go before she can be mentioned in the same breath as Clark, there are elements of Fandel’s past that make the connection easier to make than people may realize.
Let’s dive in.
For starters, they’re both from Iowa. Fandel grew up in Cedar Rapids and played at Xavier High. Clark, meanwhile, grew up in West Des Moines and played at Dowling Catholic, about 2 hours west of Cedar Rapids.
While one of these two Iowa girls elected to head south to play college ball at Kansas, the other stayed home and delivered a record-breaking and iconic 4-year career at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
Being just 30 minutes south of Cedar Rapids, Fandel made plenty of trips to Carver-Hawkeye Arena to watch Clark play and attended dozens of Iowa games when she was even younger.
“I went to a lot of her games,” Fandel recently told R1S1 Sports during a sit-down interview after a summer workout. “I remember watching her when she was a freshman and I think that really helped me grow and will help me today, too.”
The connection gets deeper than that.
“I mean, I’m a little less (intense/fearless) than her. But I’m very competitive. Her kind of swag is cool, too, just to kind of see how she carries herself.”
— KU freshman Libby Fandel on former Iowa legend Caitlin Clark
After playing her first couple of years of AAU ball with Team Iowa closer to home, Fandel joined the All Iowa Attack for her final two summers of AAU ball (after her sophomore and junior seasons at Xavier), putting her on a path to follow even more closely in Clark’s footsteps.
Clark also played AAU ball, and starred, for All Iowa Attack a few years before Fandel joined.
“She’s obviously a great role model,” Fandel said of the current Indian Fever star who has taken the WNBA by storm. “She came from Attack, likes to shoot it, like me, and she’s a great player. It’s super-cool because we got to see a bunch of other girls my age look up to her, too. Everyone around me knew who she was, and she’s just a really good athlete and role model.”
Part of Clark’s athletic prowess comes from her intensity, which Fandel also prides herself on.
“I mean, I’m a little less (intense/fearless) than her,” Fandel joked. “But I’m very competitive. Her kind of swag is cool, too, just to kind of see how she carries herself.”
While they were far apart enough in age to miss each other on the basketball scene, Fandel did actually get to meet Clark once.
“On a visit to Iowa,” she said. “It was early in the (recruiting) process and it was at a lunch deal with a bunch of players on the Iowa team that season.”
While following in Clark’s footsteps with the Attack team was cool enough, the chance to join the popular AAU squad was the deciding factor for Fandel in her athletic journey.
Through her freshman season of high school, she was still torn between playing basketball or volleyball in college. And she was terrifically skilled at both.
However, once she got the call from the All Iowa Attack, she put volleyball on the back burner for good.
“They reached out, I had always wanted to play for them and I knew I couldn’t play both sports after that because that was like 2 hours away from my house,” Fandel said. “I definitely always had big dreams. And once I went to Attack, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I for sure can see myself getting better and wanting to go play major college basketball.'”
Just like Clark.
Fandel’s connection to Clark, however distant it may be, is not the first time the modern-day women’s basketball star has been connected to Kansas.
Late during the 2023-24 college hoops season — Clark’s last at Iowa — she chased down former Jayhawk legend Lynette Woodard’s major college scoring record of 3,649 career points by finishing with 3,951 points during her four seasons as a Hawkeye.
How close Fandel comes to those insane numbers when it’s all said and done remains to be seen, but don’t be surprised for a second if she starts scoring right away.
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