As the WNBA Playoffs draw closer, the Indiana Fever suffered a stunning home loss to the Washington Mystics on Sunday, 93-77, in a game where the superstar backcourt of Caitlin Clark and Kelsey Mitchell still combined for over half the team's points. Clark scored 25 points, making 6 of 10 shots, and 10-of-10 from the free-throw line. Mitchell, typically a very efficient shooter, made 8 of 20 shots and finished with 22 points in a game where Indiana scored just was outscored 34-19 in the first quarter.
The Fever also scored just 11 points in the second quarter, illustrating just how poor a shooting performance the team had on Sunday. Speaking to reporters after the loss, Clark didn't hesitate to explain what went wrong for the Fever, a team that has led the league in scoring this season. More news: Olivia Miles Breaks Caitlin Clark Record to Make History in Lynx Playoff Push "I think when you give a team that much confidence early in the game, you're just digging yourself a huge hole, and a hole we could never climb out of," she said at her postgame media session.
"I thought we were just sloppy, sloppy in everything we were trying to execute. "Our defense was just pitiful. It was frustrating," Clark admitted, also crediting the Mystics for playing "really beautiful basketball." "But at the same time, it's never as bad as it seems, and it's never as good as it seems.
We shot the ball probably as poorly as we've shot it all year long. Sometimes that's just how the game of basketball goes," Clark said. Overall, Indiana shot just 36.6% for the game, compared to 56.9% for the Mystics.
That certainly has Washington looking dangerous, as they are among the eight postseason teams, along with Clark's Fever. One stat category that the Fever could see as a positive was their free-throw shooting, as they shot 90.5% from the line. They earned more free throws than their opponents, but the failure to knock down shots consistently ultimately hurt them.
With just a few games left in the regular season, WNBA Playoff matchups have yet to be announced. The Fever might hope they don't see the Mystics in a series, although this seems like just one bad performance overall by the team and could easily be turned around. The Fever are still the WNBA scoring leaders, averaging 96.7 points per game.
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