INDIANAPOLIS — Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever’s 98-87 win Friday night over the Phoenix Mercury got chippy to restart the second part of the WNBA season. With four technical fouls, perhaps the players were simply antsy and overeager to get back onto the court. Things finally boiled over.
The Fever led by 17 points at halftime, but by midway through the third quarter, that dwindled to only 10. While Fever guard Kelsey Mitchell passed by her teammate’s screen at the elbow, she was tailed by Phoenix’s Natasha Cloud, who lightly held onto her. Mitchell hit the deck, and with Cloud’s momentum, the Mercury guard was right on top of Mitchell as she stood back up.
“Got to get a little gritty and dirty obviously,” Mitchell said afterward. “Sometimes, passion, you have a passion for the game. Some moments can just spike your team up to go and play well. I had a moment myself, with T. Cloud and hats off to her for being a competitor. But I think it kind of helped us… when teams make runs is how you win games… got to be able to get trenchy.”
Mitchell pushed back. Cloud stood tall. Mitchell gave another push as players began to crowd them, not allowing for Cloud’s further retaliation. But the message was clear: Phoenix’s three Olympians and supporting cast would use physicality to get back in this game. Following the double-technical on both players, Phoenix hit three triples to take the 62-61 lead — the lead.
So how could the double-tech have helped, in Mitchell’s eyes?
But Lexie Hull, who shot 2-for-12 beyond the arc in the five games before the Olympic break, regained the one-possession lead. Clark scored an infrequent midrange jumper over an aggravated Cloud, playing enthusiastic defense, and then the point guard dished to Katie Lou Sameulson for the buzzer-beater triple. The Fever were back up by eight, warding off an embarrassing collapse.
Clark could’ve taken the shot. She had already taken six 3-pointers. She was somewhat open. And that was Samuelson’s first shot of the game.
“She was wide open,” Clark said. “I was like ooohh, she was almost like, too open.”
Hull wasn’t done. Aside from always having the defensive grit Mitchell talked about, she made her second triple with two minutes to go in the final quarter: the dagger as Kahleah Copper, Cloud, and Sophie Cunningham all hit beyond the arc to try to get back into the contest. Hull, the Fever’s 2022 first-round pick, has made two-plus threes five times in her 77-game career.
Oh, and Mitchell made four 3-pointers in the second half, leading the team with 16 points.
Kelsey Mitchell has done this before vs. Mercury, full-team contribution Friday
The last time the Fever played the Mercury was in the last week of June, winning 88-82. The opening to that and Friday night’s was vastly different. In June, the Fever went down 14-2. But Friday night, they went up 22-6 before the Mercury could even blink. And back in June, Mitchell, later an All-Star, got benched, playing one-fourth of the minutes in the first half. She didn’t score.
That didn’t happen Friday night. Mitchell played 17 minutes in the first half and was attached to the hip to Clark in support. But there was an almost-fateful similarity between games months apart. Friday night, Mitchell made five shots in the second half, leading the team with 16 points.
Everyone on the Fever was involved Friday night in Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Clark put up 29 points, and had another points/assist double-double with 10. She’s inching closer to the rookie single-season assist record — and she’s doing it in style: passing around 6-foot-9 center Brittney Griner to Aliyah Boston in the paint, grabbing the ball off the backboard and right away threading in transition to Mitchell, and hitting NaLyssa Smith running in the paint, point-blank.
Offseason signee Damaris Dantas got some minutes, another bench player Erica Wheeler connected from deep, and Boston didn’t back down from Griner in the paint, hustling and showing prowess all night.
Fever head coach Christie Sides knew Phoenix could come back
The pace in the first-quarter, in which the Fever led 33-16, tired the Mercury's legs, Christie Sides realized. If the Fever could score 29 points back in June in the third quarter, why couldn’t Phoenix do it?
They scored 28 points in the third quarter.
“These guys are capable of putting 30 points up in a quarter,” Sides recalled about what she told her team at halftime. “That is who they are. They are a veteran group. They’re three Olympians out there… we kinda just let the air out of ourselves when things go south for us… I was talking to [Boston] after the game. She was like, ‘coach, yeah it happened… but we didn’t just let it keep going.’”
The Fever’s biggest lead was 28, so to say that the win was shaky is an exaggeration. But the Fever showed that they were capable of securing their first season-sweep over the Mercury since 2015.
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