The festive season is all about family, food, and unwrapping gifts, but the new year is set to deliver the real treat: more women’s basketball. Unrivaled Season 2 is almost here, and even though Caitlin Clark won’t be suiting up, the Fever star is still eager to soak in the action, especially with one of her own teammates ready to make her debut in the league.

Kelsey Mitchell is ready for her Unrivaled debut, suiting up for one of the league’s newest teams, Hive BC. On Tuesday, she gave fans a first look by sharing a series of photos in her new jersey, teasing what’s ahead.

“Eyes open. Mouth closed,” Mitchell wrote in the caption, and it wasn’t long before Caitlin Clark jumped in to show her support.

“Let’s go, Kels!!!!!!” Clark commented, and fans everywhere are just as hyped to see one of the league’s best scorers bring her magic to Unrivaled as well.

It was a season to remember for Kelsey Mitchell in the WNBA. With Caitlin Clark limited to just 13 games, Mitchell carried the load and finished the regular season as the league’s second-leading scorer with 890 points, averaging 20.2 points and 3.4 assists per game. She was the engine of the Fever all year, leading them to their first playoff series win in a decade and pushing them to within one victory of the Finals.

Now, in Unrivaled, Kelsey will line up alongside Sonia Citron, Ezi Magbegor, Natisha Hiedeman, Saniya Rivers, and Mo Billings for Hive BC, with the team set to be coached by Chicago Sky assistant Rena Wakama. But Mitchell isn’t the only Fever star set to take part in the competition.

Caitlin Clark will be cheering on her other Fever sisters as well: Lexie Hull, Aliyah Boston, Aari McDonald, and Makayla Timpson. So, don’t be surprised if the league’s biggest star even pops up in Miami for a special appearance to show her support for her teammates.

Speaking of Caitlin being the league’s biggest star, the Fever president even called Clark the reward for enduring a few tough years at the bottom.

Kelly Krauskopf Calls Caitlin Clark the Silver Lining of Past Mistakes

Since lifting the title in 2012 with Tamika Catchings leading from the front, the Fever have struggled to recapture that magic, with their trip to the Finals in 2015 standing as the last real high point before the downfall began.

Indiana had a winless playoff exit in 2016, and from there, it just got worse. 9–25 in 2017, 6–28 in 2018, 13–21 in 2019, 6–16 in the COVID-shortened 2020 season, 6–26 in 2021, 5–31 in 2022, and 13–27 in 2023. They missed the playoffs every single year in that stretch and finished dead last in the standings in 2018, 2021, and 2022.

Luckily for the Fever, those tough years came with lottery picks, a reward for being bad, as team president Kelly Krauskopf put it in an interview with FOX59 News.

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“I jokingly have said, you know, to get two No. 1 picks, it means that you had some pretty bad years before you got those two No. 1 picks. But certainly worth the opportunity to have and to draft a player like Aliyah Boston and Caitlin Clark. And these are the moments, as a franchise and as a sports team, you build on, and you hopefully know what happens to get there, but once you get there, it changes the trajectory of your team,” she said.

Landing Aliyah Boston and Caitlin Clark with back-to-back No. 1 picks has completely changed the trajectory of this Fever franchise. In Clark’s first season, Indiana made the playoffs for the first time since 2016, and they followed it up this year by pushing all the way to the semifinals.

And if there is a WNBA season next year, you can expect Caitlin Clark to be right at the heart of it, leading the Fever with that same fire and belief, and just maybe, guiding Indiana all the way to a long-awaited second championship.