PORTLAND — Of all the things that went wrong for the Indiana Fever on Saturday in the Moda Center, officiating was the least of their woes.
“Officiating wasn’t our problem tonight,” Caitlin Clark said when asked how the officiating changes affect how the Fever play defensively following Indiana’s 100-84 loss to Portland
If anyone would know, it’s Clark. She only played 21 minutes because of foul trouble — she picked up her third foul in the second quarter, forcing her to sit, then her fourth and fifth in the third quarter.
That forced her to sit for the first four minutes of the fourth — she checked back in at the 6:33 mark, then subbed out at the three-minute mark as Fever coach Stephanie White emptied her bench in what was a 22-point game.
She finished with six points — just the seventh time in her career with a single-digit scoring game — on 1-of-7 shooting, along with six assists, in 21 minutes.
“It’s hard when you foul, and I just need to do a better job being straight up, keeping the defender in front of me, and also like, if they’re gonna hunt isos, just move my feet a little bit better,” Clark said. “Definitely some tough ones, but this is basketball, which is a game. Learn from it, watch the film, and come back next time and be ready to go.”
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The Fever didn’t have much go right for them in their first visit to Portland, anyway.
They started the game on an 8-2 run, but Portland responded with a 13-2 run after Clark and Boston subbed out of the game just three minutes in. Portland extended that run to 27-7, even with Clark and Boston checking back in later in the quarter, and held Indiana without a field goal for the final seven minutes of the first.
“I just thought they were the hungrier team,” White said. “I thought they played with relentless effort, a relentless pursuit to get what they wanted, to be disruptive on defense to get to their spots on offense. I thought their competitive spirit was better than ours.”
It’s fair to think Portland had a hungry, competitive spirit coming into Saturday’s game; after all, they lost to the Atlanta Dream by 20 points Friday in the first game of a back-to-back. On the other side of that, the Fire were coming into Saturday when they had tipped off another game just 22 hours earlier.
Indiana, too, should’ve had a healthy amount of competitive spirit, considering their two-point loss to Golden State on Thursday night. They came out looking like they had that spirit, sure, with that 8-2 run.
But Portland, the team that was on the second game of a back-to-back, was able to take over. The Fire led by 14 points by the end of the first quarter, then used a 37-point third quarter (the same number of points the Fever scored in the entire first half) to extend their lead to 25.
“You got to give Portland credit, I thought they were really good,” Clark said. “They were aggressive, obviously, they shot the ball well, almost 40% from 3, 50% from the field, it’s a recipe for success. We’ve just got to be a little bit more disruptive in everything that we’re doing.”
After an 0-2 West Coast swing, the Fever are now sitting at 4-4 — ninth in the WNBA standings.
Right now, the issue seems less about the talent the Fever have: the big three of Clark, Boston and Kelsey Mitchell can run circles around most other teams in the league. But Portland, a team that didn’t get any major free agent signings and was built through an expansion draft that allowed existing teams to protect their top five players, was able to dominate every facet of this game. Because they had that competitive spirit.
The Fever, with a roster that has the talent to compete with the top teams in the league, need to find that spirit.
Chloe Peterson is the Indiana Fever beat reporter for IndyStar. Reach her at chloe.peterson@indystar.com or follow her on X at @chloepeterson67. Get IndyStar’s Indiana Fever and Caitlin Clark coverage sent directly to your inbox with our Caitlin Clark Fever newsletter. Subscribe to IndyStar TV: Fever for in-depth analysis, behind-the-scenes coverage and more.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: After winless West Coast road trip, Indiana Fever need to find competitive spirit
Reporting by Chloe Peterson, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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