{"id":72007,"date":"2025-08-10T09:15:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T09:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/72007\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T09:15:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T09:15:13","slug":"mercury-hc-praises-sophie-cunningham-for-defending-caitlin-clark-in-fever-sun-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/72007\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercury HC Praises Sophie Cunningham For Defending Caitlin Clark in Fever-Sun Fight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">Phoenix Mercury head coach Nate Tibbetts gave a shoutout to Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham for coming to the defense of teammate Caitlin Clark during a fight between the Fever and Connecticut Sun earlier in the season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">&#8220;I think when you come in this league, again I&#8217;m learning this league, as a second-round pick you&#8217;ve got to have to have some toughness and grit to you,&#8221; Tibbetts told reporters. &#8220;She\u2019s embraced that role, and it\u2019s worked for them. And so I give Sophie credit, because she competes at a high level.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">Tibbetts coached Cunningham on the Mercury during the 2024 season before she joined the Fever in a Feb. 2 <a class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-inherit MuiLink-root MuiLink-underlineAlways MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__ui__link__medium_strong css-lu48cp\" href=\"https:\/\/fever.wnba.com\/news\/indiana-fever-acquire-guard-sophie-cunningham\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">trade<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">During Indiana&#8217;s 88-71 win over Connecticut on June 17, Cunningham was\u00a0<a class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-inherit MuiLink-root MuiLink-underlineAlways MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__ui__link__medium_strong css-lu48cp\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/wnba\/story\/_\/id\/45539584\/no-suspensions-tuesday-fever-sun-skirmishes-wnba-says\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">ejected<\/a>\u00a0for a flagrant 2 foul on Sun guard Jacy Sheldon that resulted in a physical altercation. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">Earlier in the game, Clark was accidentally poked in the eye by Sheldon and responded with a push. Connecticut guard Marina Mabrey\u00a0ended up giving Clark a light shove in return.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">Cunningham has lived up to expectations during her first year with Indiana, opening the season as a reserve before stepping into the team&#8217;s starting lineup. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">She&#8217;s averaging 8.0 points, 3.8 rebounds and 1.0 steals per game while shooting a career-high 46.7 percent from the field and 41.9 percent from three-point territory in 25 appearances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Phoenix Mercury head coach Nate Tibbetts gave a shoutout to Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham for coming to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-72007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72007","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=72007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}