Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White was thinking the same thing as most everyone else as she jogged to the far baseline at Mohegan Sun Arena to be with guard Sophie Cunningham as she clutched her right knee and yelled in agony.
“Holy (expletive).”
Sun guard Bria Hartley fell into the side of Cunningham’s leg underneath the Connecticut basket as Hartley attempted a pass to the sideline in the second quarter. Play continued as Cunningham grabbed her right leg and hopped to the baseline, then fell to the floor, grabbing her knee and yelling in pain.
Play was stopped as trainers tended to Cunningham. White and Lexie Hull quickly jogged to Cunningham from the Fever side, while Marina Mabrey came off the Sun bench and held a towel shielding Cunningham from the crowd until her teammates could reach that end of the floor.
Cunningham was helped off the floor by team trainers and the team released a statement confirming her right knee injury and ruling her out for the rest of the game.
“Especially the way that she fell and how she was holding herself and how much pain she was in, at the time it’s like, ‘crap,’” said White, who did not have an update on Cunningham’s status after the game, a dramatic 99-93 overtime win by the Fever.
“And then you go down there, you see her and it’s like OK, I just want her to calm down and be able to regroup, and then it turns to problem solving, right? How do we put ourselves in a position to win? I think that’s maybe how I survive is going straight to problem solving. But this group, they’re special and I’m thankful for them.”
lt’s the latest blow to a Fever roster decimated by injury. Caitlin Clark has been out since July 15 with a right groin injury and point guards Aari McDonald and Sydney Colson suffered season-ending injuries July 30 at Phoenix.
Kelsey Mitchell said the scene Sunday was like deja vu.
“I feel like I just saw AB (Aliyah Boston) on the ground covering someone else up and it was just — I think part of it is truly humbling,” she said. “But on the other side, seeing Soph go down, it fuels you. If you care about your team, care about the people in your locker room — I can’t even explain it. You just really have to care about the people you play with and it fuels who we are as people.”
Even if Cunningham’s injury were to keep her out long-term, the Fever would be ineligible to sign another hardship player to replace her until after Friday’s game vs. the Minnesota Lynx.
“It’s huge,” White said of the upcoming four-day break. “We need the rest. We need the recovery. We have players who have played a lot of heavy minutes, so we need that (rest) and we need time to re-calibrate. After Phoenix, it was a quick turnaround to figure out how we’re going to play without Aari and Syd. Now we have to figure out how we’re going to play without Sophie, who can play in certain roles, substitution patterns and what kind of wrinkles we can throw out there.
“It doesn’t get any easier. … It’s really good mentally, physically and emotionally for us, and then it gives us practice time, which we’re going to need.”
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