After the Indiana Fever’s 109-100 loss to the Minnesota Lynx, Caitlin Clark took accountability for her missed boxouts. One game later, her mistakes were much, much louder. Clark missed two free throws that could have delivered the Fever a win in regulation. Instead, Chelsea Gray sent the game into overtime and hit a 3-pointer to win it after Clark turned the ball over in a one-on-one situation with A’ja Wilson.
“Obviously just can’t happen,” Clark said about her missed free throws in the postgame media availability. “Those are free throws I usually make and certainly frustrating…kind of cost my team there for sure. So, that’s on me.”
She also said, “We put ourselves in position to win the game, and then obviously it was me that made costly errors for us. So, that’s on me to help us win. That’s my job. That’s what I get paid to do.”
Clark is one of the Fever’s leaders, so it’s good to see her hold herself accountable, but fans shouldn’t be too hard on her. She made some bad mistakes at the worst possible moments. Still, the loss is not entirely on her. And, most importantly, she can take it as a learning opportunity. It’s easy to forget that Clark barely played in her second season and still has plenty of things to learn.
“At the end of the day, we gotta watch it, we gotta learn from it,” Stephanie White said postgame. “We gotta grow. We can’t trip on it. We can’t trip on anything that’s behind us. We gotta move forward.”
She added, “For our young core, it’s a growing experience. There’s no substitute for experience.”
Stephanie White came to Clark’s defense after the game
Stephanie White made sure to remind everyone that the loss wasn’t solely on Clark after the game.
“As an athlete and as a coach and as somebody who’s been around for a long time, you know it doesn’t come down to one singular thing,” White said. “We know that. She’s disappointed in herself certainly, as I’m sure a lot of our players are but we gotta use it as fuel. She’s going to be better on Saturday because of it.”
She also added, “It doesn’t come down to one thing. And I know, again, it’s easy to look at it and think that it doesn’t come down, but it was a collection of things. If we cut our turnovers in half, it’s a different ball game.”
Indiana has a tough stretch coming up and high expectations to live up to
Clark and her teammates cannot dwell on this game for too long, but they do have to learn from it because the Fever’s schedule doesn’t get any easier for the rest of the season.
Eight of their last games are against playoff teams, including the league-leading Minnesota Lynx. The other games are against the Chicago Sky, Connecticut Sun, and Toronto Tempo. It took the Fever overtime to beat the Sky the last time they met.
Indiana is currently in the lower half of the playoff picture. If the season ended today, they would have to face the Golden State Valkyries in the first round—not a great matchup given the fact that they lost the season series 1-2 and the Valkyries are better equipped than anyone else to slow down their high-scoring offense.
They don’t want to risk falling in the standings and having to face Minnesota or Las Vegas in the first round either. So, winning as many of those tough games as possible will be crucial.
Add us as a preferred source on Google