reigning<\/a> Eastern Conference Player of the Week, and teammate Kelsey Mitchell\u2014who went to the locker room in the fourth quarter with an apparent injury\u2014made history by tying A’ja Wilson’s record of 20 straight games with at least 20 points.<\/p>\nThe pair of guards dominated the scoring and proved too much for a Tempo team that saw Marina Mabrey lead the way offensively.<\/p>\n
The Fever entered play just a half-game behind the Las Vegas Aces for the third seed and 2.5 games behind the Golden State Valkyries for the second seed. Given how they and the Tempo have played of late, Tuesday was a golden opportunity for Clark and Co. to make up more ground and continue climbing the standings.<\/p>\n
Indiana started accordingly and built a double-digit lead within the first five minutes of the game.<\/p>\n
Mitchell in particular was unstoppable out of the gates with 16 points in the first quarter alone. She hit from deep, unleashed stepback jumpers, knifed her way into the lane and mixed in a dizzying array of moves to get past helpless defenders who couldn’t stay in front of her.<\/p>\n
While the Ohio State product did the heavy lifting in the scoring department in the first quarter, Clark took over for extended stretches in the second quarter. She found her shooting stroke from deep but also facilitated whenever Toronto sent multiple defenders her way.<\/p>\n
To the Tempo’s credit, they closed the halftime deficit to just eight thanks in large part to Brittney Sykes picking up right where she left off in her first game since June 16. Sykes’ ability to score in the lane was the driving force behind the home team remaining within striking distance, but Temi Fagbenle and Aneesah Morrow also provided a much-needed spark off the bench.<\/p>\n
Offense wasn’t the problem for Toronto.<\/p>\n
She made history in the third quarter by reaching 20 points and then converted an and-1 and back-to-back threes all in the span of one minute to push Indiana’s advantage back to 12 heading into the fourth.<\/p>\n
The Tempo, just like any other opponent for the Fever, were put in a position where they had to pick their position facing two MVP candidates in the backcourt, and Mitchell made them pay whenever they shaded toward Clark.<\/p>\n
That also creates shooting openings for others, and Sophie Cunningham took advantage on her way to double figures:<\/p>\n
It seemed as if Cunningham’s three-pointer on a Clark assist in the final two minutes all but put it away, but Mabrey drilled two straight three-pointers to put the pressure on a Fever team playing without Mitchell in the fourth.<\/p>\n
However, the visitors responded one more time with clutch free throws and will now turn their attention toward Thursday’s road game against the Dallas Wings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Indiana Fever continue to roll. Indiana extended its winning streak to five with a 101-95 victory over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":860342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-860341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}