At Iowa, Caitlin Clark was a walking, talking, no-look-passing, 30-foot bombing cheat code.
It was both expected and implausible that she would be the same person the instant she put on an Indiana Fever shirt. Indiana wasn’t winning titles the reason they were selected with the first overall choice in the WNBA Draft for two years in a row. As it was, they hardly ever won.
If you understood anything about basketball, you could see that the Fever’s 1–8 start was reasonably reasonable.
A good core group consists of Clark, Aliyah Boston, Kelsey Mitchell, and NaLyssa Smith. However, they were serving as colleagues for the first nine games of their careers.
It was asking girls to go out and do a woman’s job to expect them to go out there and beat seasoned teams like Connecticut and New York, who have combined to hand Indiana five losses in the first 16 games of the season.
Caitlin Clark starting to catch up to WNBA
However, it appears like Clark and the Fever are beginning to make sense of things. Their third consecutive victory, an 88-81 home triumph over Washington on Wednesday night, demonstrated the potential this club has with Clark and some areas they can still work on.
They improved to 6-10, and she stated, “You’re starting to see what this group can do.” “You can stack victories, which boosts confidence in everyone.” We have won as a team; no one person has done it all for us.
Nevertheless, Clark’s handprints were evident throughout the most recent triumph. Her impressive stat line included 18 points, 12 rebounds, 6 assists, and 4 steals. And the way she approached it revealed how she is developing her professional game-playing skills.
In the first meeting between the teams on June 7, Clark scorched the Mystics for 30 points on 15 shots, making 7 of 13 3-pointers. In the rematch, they weren’t going to let her miss the mark. To her credit, Clark refrained from pressuring things.
With the exception of one fast 3-pointer in each half, Clark accepted what the defense offered her. She only tried 12 shots, although her scoring was mostly from drives. Playing the position of passer with pleasure, Clark got Boston rolling early, dishing up two transition feeds for layups that contributed to her 22-point performance.
Clark claimed that in the opening quarter, her rebounding was crucial. Indiana bolted across the floor as she collected six boards in the allotted time.
When I can get it off the rim and push in transition, I believe we’re extremely good, Clark stated. I therefore really enjoy attempting to chase it down off the rim and then really going for it. That, in my opinion, gave Aliyah numerous easy points early in the game.
