INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 No one, other than those on the court, could hear what Caitlin Clark was saying as the Indiana Fever superstar screamed. It didn\u2019t matter that her defiant declarations, evidenced by her flexing and stomping, were being drowned out by the home crowd she\u2019d just sent into jubilation.<\/p>\n
This moment was about more than the game-tying 3-pointer she drilled with 3.1 seconds left against the Washington Mystics. It was a chance for one of the WNBA\u2019s flag bearers to return to a familiar place, where her long-range shooting helped her bend the game to her undeniable will. Clark struggled from distance through the first 11 quarters of the season, missing 18 of her first 23 3-point attempts.<\/p>\n
She finally responded Friday by drilling five 3s in the fourth quarter to force overtime, only for the Fever to fall 104-102 to the young but poised Mystics. Clark\u2019s emotions, which bubbled to the surface more than a few times as she drilled an array of deep 3s, were understandably muted after the back-and-forth contest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s like the hardest thing as a basketball player is when you\u2019re not making shots, to really stay in it,\u201d said Clark, who scored 17 of her game-high 32 points in the fourth quarter. \u201cSo, I\u2019m certainly proud of myself. Really, really battled.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clark and her teammates had been nearly flawless, at least offensively, with the game on the line. Yet, the defeat still left Clark questioning the Fever\u2019s defensive DNA.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt starts with me, and if we don\u2019t have three clunky quarters, we don\u2019t force ourselves into basketball heroics,\u201d Clark said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to play that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clark added that she can appreciate the high-intensity moments that often captivate the crowd. Friday\u2019s game was full of them as the Fever and Mystics had six lead changes in the fourth quarter. There was almost a seventh as Mystics guard Sonia Citron, who scored a team-high 30 points, threw in a half-court shot at the end of regulation that was a split-second too late.<\/p>\n
Washington ultimately held on, with Citron and rookie Cotie McMahon, who made her WNBA debut Friday, each scoring 5 points in overtime. But from Clark\u2019s perspective, the game wasn\u2019t necessarily lost in the extra frame. It was decided much earlier, when the Fever\u2019s defensive effort wasn\u2019t up to par, and the Mystics feasted, particularly around the basket. Washington outscored Indiana 58-28 in the paint and, as a result, shot a blistering 56 percent from the field.<\/p>\n
Perhaps even more concerning than the Fever\u2019s poor defensive showing against the Mystics is that it wasn\u2019t an outlier but an early-season theme. The Fever became the eighth WNBA team in one season to suffer multiple losses when they\u2019ve scored 100-plus points. Indiana has played only three games.<\/p>\n
\u201cShots did start falling,\u201d Clark said of Indiana\u2019s fourth-quarter and overtime surge. \u201cAnd I think we\u2019ve been letting that dictate how well we play defense too much, which is disappointing for us as a group. We gotta be able to defend all of the time. So, I think that\u2019s our biggest area of growth. Like, yeah, everyone wants to guard when they\u2019re making shots. \u2026 (But) when things aren\u2019t going well, we still gotta be able to defend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fever coach Stephanie White shared the same assessment. At one point, after Citron cut backdoor for an easy layup off an inbound pass late in the third quarter, White called a timeout as her frustration boiled over.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe put a lot of pressure on our offense to be perfect when we don\u2019t consistently defend,\u201d White said. \u201c\u2026 We\u2019re taking chances (on steals), we\u2019re fouling shooters who are about to shoot tough shots, we\u2019ve got breakdowns in coverages. We gotta find combinations of players and rotations that\u2019s net efficiency can be good. We can\u2019t wait to play defense in situations where we feel good.\u201d<\/p>\n
White, however, commended her players\u2019 resilience, which was spearheaded by fiery leader Clark. The two-time All-Star proved yet again why her spotlight is different than everyone else\u2019s. When her 3-point shot is falling, she\u2019s capable of making the near-impossible look routine, and her Herculean effort was almost enough Friday.<\/p>\n
Almost.<\/p>\n
Indiana trailed by eight points with 50.5 seconds left in the fourth quarter before Kelsey Mitchell\u2019s 3-pointer, Myisha Hines-Allen\u2019s layup and Clark\u2019s seventh 3-pointer pulled the game even. It was an enthralling but heartbreaking finish for Indiana, the type that can build character or break it if the Fever don\u2019t take a hard look in the mirror.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just comes down to defense and a will to defend and getting stops,\u201d Clark said. \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s gonna allow us to play in transition and that\u2019s what you saw in the fourth quarter when we got stops. That was exciting basketball. That\u2019s how we want to play all of the time, but it all comes back to us playing defense.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 No one, other than those on the court, could hear what Caitlin Clark was saying as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[2839,99,434],"class_list":["post-646594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-indiana-fever","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}