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Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever started the 2024 WNBA season 1-8. Now, with just over two weeks left in the regular season, they are officially playoff bound.
It’s been a remarkable turnaround for Indiana, a team that had not had a winning season since 2015.
Rookie of the Year favorite Clark is a major reason why the Fever are suddenly a postseason threat. Speaking to the media before the Fever’s game Wednesday night, September 4 against the Los Angeles Sparks, she shared exactly how she celebrated the Fever clinching the night before.
“My reaction was I turned it off and went to sleep,” she said. “I didn’t even check my phone until the next morning.”
The Fever clinched thanks to the Atlanta Dream and Chicago Sky both losing their games, which ensured that Indiana would finish the regular season no worse than eighth in the 12-team league.
“It’s definitely cool, especially that it doesn’t have to come down to the wire for us,” Clark added.
Caitlin Clark and the Fever Have Work Left To Do
While the Fever are definitely headed to the playoffs, they are still playing for seeding. Luckily for them, six of their last seven games are at home, and four of those seven are against teams not currently in the playoff picture.
As Clark noted, it presents an opportunity for Indiana to lock up the 6 seed — or at least avoid the 8 seed and a first-round matchup with the league-best New York Liberty. She recognized that while there’s still plenty to play for, the team can play a little looser.
“We can just really relax and play basketball and have a lot of fun,” Clark said. “Yeah, we accomplished [clinching the playoffs] but there’s so much more left on the table that we can do to position ourselves better.”
She added that there’s no need for the Fever to put a ceiling on what they can accomplish in these final two weeks.
“These are ones that are very winnable for us,” she said of the Fever’s remaining home games. “So I think still going one game at a time, that has done so well for us to get to this point, I think that should still be the focus.”
The Fever Turnaround Has Been About More than Clark
Clark enters Wednesday night’s game as the reigning Eastern Conference Player of the Month and Rookie of the Month thanks to a torrid August in which her lowest scoring output was still 19 points — her season average. The Fever went 5-1 in the abbreviated August schedule and are 16-8 since that woeful start.
It hasn’t only been the rookie from Iowa. Kelsey Mitchell has been even better offensively. She is she’s coming off one of her finest performances of the season — a 36-point effort against the Dallas Wings in which she shot 5-7 from three. It was her seventh consecutive game of at least 21 points.
Aliyah Boston has been great as well, churning out double-doubles at a rate that should make all WNBA fans outside of Chicago jealous. Then there’s Lexie Hull, a player who barely cracked the rotation early in the season. She has become a bona fide three-point shooting markswoman over the last two months. She entered Wednesday’s game 17 for her last 25 from long range.
This is not the same Indiana Fever team that was an early season punching bag for the rest of the league. Fans wanted Christie Sides fired in May and she was WNBA Coach of the Month in August.
Circumstances have changed at Gainbridge Fieldhouse and the rest of the league better take notice.
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