The Indiana Fever had plenty of reasons to feel good about their season as they entered the final stretch of the regular season. But after Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston returned from helping Team USA win its fifth straight FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup gold medal, the Fever found themselves navigating an unexpected late-season stumble. The Fever somehow managed to secure a win against the Toronto Tempo, but things quickly took a turn against the Washington Mystics.
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So, during the September 24 episode of No Hesitation, the 30-year-old reflected on how the Fever looked after Clark and Boston returned from their gold-medal run.
“So teamwise, first game against Toronto, man, I thought honestly, and I think all of us felt like – we were feeling good and confident, but it was a little rocky when you bring (Aliyah Boston) and (Caitlin Clark) back after them winning gold. I thought it was going to flow a little bit more, but it didn’t,” she said. “And that’s okay. We still got the dub. Washington, though, that might be one that our whole team is just wanting to flush because that was probably one of our worst games of the whole season.”
“And it sucks that it happened right now, but at least it happened now and not during playoffs. And so I think you can still learn from it a little bit,” Sophie Cunningham added.
It was easy to understand why Cunningham felt that way. The Fever scored just 77 points (third-lowest scoring total of the season at the time) in their loss to Washington. They failed to secure a lead throughout the game while the Mystics shot 57% from the field and went 9-for-18 from three-point range.
That loss ended Indiana’s three-game winning streak and its run of four straight games scoring more than 100 points. For a team that had been the league’s highest-scoring offense for much of the season, the performance looked nothing like the Fever basketball fans had become accustomed to.
Yet Indiana responded almost immediately, defeating the top-seeded Minnesota Lynx 96-77 in the following game. That appeared to put the Fever back on track heading into the final game of the regular season. Instead, the rematch with Minnesota turned into an even tougher night.
The Lynx handed Indiana an 86-66 loss, making it the Fever’s worst defeat of the season. Minnesota scored 62 points in the first half, the most Indiana had allowed in a single half all year, leaving the Fever at a 30-point deficit. Kelsey Mitchell’s remarkable streak of 20-point games dating back to early June also came to an end, while Clark was held to just two points.
So, in the span of just a few days, the Fever went from beating the league’s No. 1 team by 19 points to losing to that same team by 20.
That kind of late-season roller coaster is hardly what Indiana wanted heading into the playoffs. But Sophie Cunningham’s point about the timing may now matter most. The Fever have little time to dwell on the losses, with the postseason already set to begin.
Indiana will open its playoff run against the defending champions, the Las Vegas Aces, meaning the lessons from those final games will have to translate quickly. After struggling to find their rhythm following Clark and Boston’s return, then suffering their worst loss of the season, the Fever now have the biggest test of their season waiting for them. So for Sophie Cunningham and the Fever, the hope is that their roughest stretch arrived early enough to learn from it, rather than when there is no tomorrow.