Caitlin Clark revealed a clear area for physical improvement after an ankle injury scare on May 20.
While Clark turned her ankle in the first half of the Indiana Fever‘s 88-84 loss to the Connecticut Sun, she returned in the second half to finish the game. Clark scored 17 points on 5-11 shooting, and she added three rebounds, five assists, and two blocks.
“I turned it pretty good,” Clark told the media on May 20 afterward. “I think it just got caught, I don’t think I stepped on anybody. I don’t have the best ankles in the world. It was a little tight this morning, but nothing out of the ordinary.”
“It felt good, I just wanted to get a lot more tape on it as fast as I could to get back out there playing,” Clark added. “It’s hard, especially when I felt I started the game off good, then you get hurt and you’ve got to sit out the last five minutes of the first half, then wait for halftime.”
Caitlin Clark tweaks her left ankle, then smacks a chair on the bench on her way back to the locker room with athletic trainer Todd Champlin
“It’s hard to get into a flow so I think it took me until the end of the third quarter to get back into a little bit of a flow, but every basketball player has had an ankle injury,” Clark continued. “If not, you’re not a true baller I guess, so it’ll be a little stiff but I’ll be good.”
Clark didn’t have significant injuries during her storied collegiate career at Iowa where she became a national phenom. She played in 139 games over four seasons and became the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer with 3,951 career points.
Caitlin Clark: ‘I Think You Can See the Progress’
Things haven’t started as strongly for Clark in her WNBA career where the Fever have an 0-4 start, and she averages 17 points, four rebounds, and 5.5 assists per game.
However, she and the Fever made progress with their closest loss of the season. The Fever previously lost the first three games by 11 or more points.
“I think you can see the progress that this team is making and that’s why this one hurts a lot, because we were right there and we had plenty of opportunities to go win the game — and then you don’t,” Clark said. “It’s just some little things that we do to ourselves.”
Indiana had the lead 70-68 with 7:16 left in the game when Clark drilled a three-pointer from the logo. It came right after Aliyah Boston‘s block on the other end.
Aliyah Boston block to Caitlin Clark logo bomb three on the other end, oh man
“I think it was a big shot,” Clark said. “It gave us some momentum, got the crowd going. Our crowd was incredible, our fans were incredible.”
Boston extended it to 72-68 with 6:06 remaining, but the Fever couldn’t hold off the Sun, which grabbed the lead for good at 78-76 with 2:51 left.
Caitlin Clark, Fever Get Shot at 1-3 Storm Next
Clark and company will get another shot to get into the win column on May 22 when the Fever visit the Seattle Storm (1-3). It marks the first game where the Fever will play a team with a losing record.
As Clark expressed in her pregame interview, she has been keeping things in perspective.
“Coach Christie [Sides] says, like, this is a process. This isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight,” Clark said.
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Caitlin Clark Makes Concerning Admission Over Ankle Injury vs. Sun