By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

IOWA CITY — Lisa Bluder thought back to that day 24 years ago after she had been hired as Iowa’s women’s basketball coach.

Bluder and her two assistant coaches/friends — Jan Jensen and Jenni Fitzgerald — had a plan.

“Jan, Jenni and I came in here one time and said, ‘We’re going to fill this place up someday,’” Bluder said on Sunday, after her sixth-ranked Hawkeyes, playing in front of their last sellout crowd of their sold-out home season, defeated No. 2 Ohio State 93-83. “I don’t know if any of us ever thought we’d really do it, but it happened.”

Oh, it happened and then some.

Attendance for Sunday’s game was 14,998, and it wasn’t just 14,998 regular black-and-gold fans.

There was a rapper — Travis Scott.

A Baseball Hall of Famer — Nolan Ryan.

Basketball legends — Lynette Woodard and Maya Moore.

A commercial character — Jake from State Farm.

Two national TV networks — ESPN’s College GameDay pre-game show, and the game coverage by FOX.

The Greatest Show on Wood has been the hottest ticket around, at home and on the road.

And so everyone came to celebrate on Sunday, Iowa’s Senior Day, when it was a chance for a regular-season goodbye for five seniors — Kate Martin, Gabbie Marshall, Sharon Goodman, Molly Davis and, oh yeah, Caitlin Clark.

Every game, it seems, Clark adds a piece to a resumé that is breathtaking if you look at it, certainly if you try to read it. Records fall when Clark plays, and on Sunday she knocked down another gargantuan one, passing Pete Maravich as the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer in men’s and women’s basketball.

“They used to call her, ‘Ponytail Pete,’ when she was a little kid, and now she has the record,” Bluder said.

Clark had 35 points in the game, and now has 3,685 in her career. She’s been roaring past icons in the last couple of weeks — Kelsey Plum’s NCAA women’s record fell first, then Lynette Woodard’s major college mark from her AIAW days, and now Maravich.

Clark, of course, isn’t thinking about personal history. The Hawkeyes finished the regular season 26-4 overall, 15-3 in the Big Ten, tied for second behind Ohio State, which had the conference title clinched before even coming to Iowa City.

It was the same scenario as last year, when Iowa closed the season by hosting regular-season champion Indiana. College GameDay was here then. A sellout crowd was here then. And Clark delivered the game-winning buzzer-beater, starting a stretch of wins for the Hawkeyes that swept the Big Ten Tournament and then went through the NCAA tournament until the championship-game loss to LSU.

Doing that again, with one more win added on, is Clark’s plan.

“I feel like I’m so focused on helping this team win and be so great, that it’s hard for me to wrap my head around everything that’s going on,” Clark said. “I think I’m just trying to soak in the moment. A record is a record. I don’t want that to be the reason people remember me. I hope people remember me for the way I play, with the smile on my face, my competitive fire.”

So this was another day for Clark. It started with her alarm going off at 6:22 a.m. — of course there’s a 22 in it, given her jersey number — and then she was at Carver-Hawkeye for a shootaround and then College GameDay.

Still, it was a day of surprises, when Clark got to meet Moore again. Moore was Clark’s favorite player in the WNBA growing up, and Clark has often told the story about running to hug Moore one time when she saw her when Moore was playing for the Minnesota Lynx.

They hugged again in the arena tunnel on Sunday, a surprise set up by ESPN and State Farm, one of Clark’s NIL partners.

Each hug, Clark said, meant a lot.

“I think they both kind of have a different magnitude to them,” she said. “I think the one when I was younger was like, I was just a young girl and that’s why I loved women’s basketball, it was because of her and how good the Lynx were. I wanted to be just like her.

“Then obviously for her to be here and surprise me was pretty special. And I felt like I was that young girl again. It’s crazy how life can come full circle.”

The Hawkeyes themselves have come full circle from this time last year. A new season, with a different team, and suddenly the path looks the same, just with a lot more celebrities along for the ride.

It was a season that at times felt like it wasn’t allowed to breathe. Every game, Bluder has said repeatedly, has felt like an NCAA tournament game because of the attention and ferocity of opponents’ best efforts.

A season always reaches its one-and-done point, and now the Hawkeyes are here. The way they controlled Sunday’s game against the team at the top of the conference and just one step from the top of the national rankings is a sign they want to stay for a while.

“I think you can say this is a statement,” Clark said. “But I think more than anything, it’s just good momentum for our team going into the Big Ten tournament. You never want to go to the Big Ten tournament on a loss.”

Sunday was emotional, but it wasn’t a goodbye. The Hawkeyes will be back — they’ll get the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament on their home court.

The stars will be out. The lights will be hot.

And another sellout will happen.

“It’s been a lot,” Clark said of the day. “But this is so fun, this is so special.

“This is what we’ve built here.”

Photo: Iowa’s Caitlin Clark signs autographs after Sunday’s win over Ohio State. (Keith Gillett/Icon Sportswire)