The four-time MVP<\/a>\u00a0finished with 13 points on 6-of-20 shooting and had eight rebounds, four assists and three blocks. Chelsea Gray had 15 points and six assists.<\/p>\nKelsey Mitchell led Indiana with 21 points and Lexie Hull finished with 16 points and 10 rebounds. Aliyah Boston had 12 points, eight rebounds and four assists for the Fever, who held a 16-4 edge in offensive rebounds.<\/p>\n
The Fever got through the first round of the playoffs and beat Las Vegas in Game 1 despite having lost Caitlin Clark, Sydney Colson, Aari McDonald and Sophie Cunningham to season-ending injuries during the regular season.<\/p>\n
Indiana wore down late on Friday, going nearly nine minutes between baskets, a stretch that began late in the third quarter. The Aces took full advantage by scoring eight straight to extend a four-point lead to 71-59 midway through the fourth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we got a lot of good shots. Didn\u2019t make a lot of them, you know,\u201d Fever coach Stephanie White said. \u201cWe missed some opportunities at the free-throw line and then got a little stagnant. They were still in a good spot, though, because we were still getting stops until about the middle of the fourth quarter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Las Vegas controlled most of the first half, scoring the first six points of the second quarter to take a 26-16 lead.<\/p>\n
But another boisterous home crowd \u2014 and Wilson closing the half with 10 straight misses \u2014 buoyed the Fever. Three straight 3-pointers helped Indiana charge back within 35-34 at halftime.<\/p>\n
The Fever took their first lead on Boston\u2019s layup to open the second half and led most of the third until the Aces clamped down on defense and pulled away.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know how important defense is for us, that\u2019s something that we\u2019ve been really dialed into, something we\u2019ve been focused on,\u201d said Smith, who was traded from Indiana to Dallas during the offseason before landing in Las Vegas. \u201cDefense is like our core focus. When our defense is on, our offense is 10 times better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIANAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 Jackie Young scored 25 points in her home state, NaLyssa Smith added 16 points against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-172396","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}