The University of Iowa has been well represented in recent professional drafts as Iowa football star Cooper DeJean was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in April, and of course Iowa women's basketball phenom Caitlin Clark was the first pick in the WNBA Draft. Clark was the best player in women's college basketball last year and she is truly changing the game of women's basketball. Clark is now playing for the Indiana Fever.
While football is the sport for Cooper DeJean, he recently said that he thinks that he could beat Caitlin Clark in a game of one-on-one in basketball. DeJean did play basketball in high school and his highlights have been going around on social media, and he can definitely play. However, good enough to beat one of the best shooters to ever play?
Cooper DeJean recently appeared on Up & Adams and talked about his bold claim with Kay Adams. Adams doesn't think that DeJean would beat Clark in a game of one-on-one, and DeJean shared that Clark texted him about it as well. Here is the exchange that they had.
Cooper DeJean: Obviously you know Caitlin’s a special player. She's done so much for women's basketball and the University of Iowa in general so I have nothing but respect for her. You know she took a shot back at me after she texted me and said that she doesn'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.
Kay Adams: Do you think you could beat her?
Cooper DeJean: Yeah I mean you don't think I could?
Kay Adams: No I don’t
Cooper DeJean: I mean I used to play basketball.
Kay Adams: Oh shoot, they're running your highlights, oh shoot, oh wait well I didn't know all this, let's see. Okay let's talk give me your side of it, I've seen a lot of Caitlin highlights I've not seen yours talk me through these, oh snap.
Cooper DeJean: I mean I can jump a little bit obviously as you can see from these highlights. I got a little bit of a jump shot too, 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.
Kay Adams: So Caitlin wrote back to you and said no chance, so when are we playing this out, when is this happening?
Cooper DeJean: I don’t know she’s pretty busy right now, so I don’t know if we’ll get to do that.
Caitlin Clark vs. Cooper DeJean would be fun to see
As rookies in the pros, but Clark and DeJean have a lot going on right now, so it's unlikely that we see this one-on-one game go down. Clark is especially the busy one as the WNBA season gets going right after the draft concludes. Clark and the Fever have already started preseason play and their regular season is going to be starting up here soon as well.
DeJean will be busy with camp over the summer to prepare for his rookie season as well, but hopefully the two of them can carve out some time so we can see this matchup of Iowa legends.
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