NEW YORK — Four games into a brutal five-game road trip, it seems like the Indiana Fever are starting to feel the fatigue.
The Fever have played four games in six days, all while flying from Atlanta to Toronto to Dallas to New York. They’ve dropped two straight games, first 91-85 to the Wings on Thursday night then 109-102 to the Liberty on Saturday – both teams who are challenging the Fever for favorable seeding in the playoffs.
Dallas and New York are playing with urgency. Dallas (21-16) is sitting at eighth in the standings, in the final playoff spot, while New York (23-15) is sixth. The Fever, just five days ago, was third in the standings. Now, with these two losses, Indiana (24-14) is fifth, just one game ahead of New York.
And Indiana failed to secure any tiebreakers. Dallas now holds the head-to-head tiebreaker 2-1 over Indiana, and New York’s win means the Liberty and the Fever tied the four-game season series. The second tiebreaker is wins over teams with a .500 or better record, which can’t be calculated until the season is over.
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Two of the most pivotal games on this road trip didn’t go the Fever’s way, Fever coach Stephanie White said, because they didn’t have the same kind of urgency as the Wings and the Liberty.
“I think this is just an opportunity for us to keep learning how much of a sense of urgency you have to play with every single possession,” White said. “This is playoff basketball right now. It’s playoff basketball, and there has to be an urgency every single possession.”
And fatigue, even on the back end of this ruthless road trip, can’t be an excuse.
“This stretch is hard, my body’s sore, I’m tired, everybody is,” Caitlin Clark said ahead of the game against New York. “That’s not an excuse. You just play through that. It is what it is.”
The lack of urgency showed in multiple ways on Saturday night, most noticeably at the free-throw line. Indiana went a dismal 11 of 22 from the charity stripe, marking just the 13th time in franchise history they’ve shot .500 or less. That was 11 points left on the table in a seven-point loss.
The Fever returned to their early season defensive troubles of excessive fouling, too, sending the Liberty to the line 29 times; New York made 24.
The drastic differences in free-throw shooting, really, became the difference in this game. Their field-goal percentages were within 0.7% of each other, they both made 11 3-pointers, and Indiana even made 40 field goals to New York’s 37.
Indiana knows its offense has never been a problem. But sometimes, even hot-shooting games can’t be enough if they let their opponent do the same thing.
“I thought there were some moments where we made them uncomfortable, but not enough,” White said. “Not enough. When we were up in the ball pressuring, I thought we got some really good things on the defensive end, and then there were lapses, lapses that caused fouls that went to free throws, lapses that allowed offensive rebounds, lapses that allowed soft switches into cuts.”
The Fever have lost their small advantage in the standings, but there’s room to make it up; the difference between fourth-place Atlanta and eighth-place Dallas is just 2.5 games. That means every game, even the ones that seem like easy wins, are crucial for the Fever to regain ground in the standings.
Indiana’s road trip ends in a back-to-back, as the Fever will play the Chicago Sky on Sunday night. Even though the Sky (15-22) are 10th in the standings, they can put up a fight, they showed with wins over the Valkyries and Liberty this week. And Indiana needs to be prepared for it.
“You need to turn the page,” Aliyah Boston said. “Look at this, and we see where we’re making our mistakes, and just try to turn around really quick … Chicago’s playing really great basketball, coming off a big win, so for us, it’s just making sure we’re focused and ready for more.”
Chloe Peterson is the Indiana Fever beat reporter for IndyStar. Reach her at chloe.peterson@indystar.com. 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: How losses show Indiana Fever areas to improve with ‘playoff basketball right now’
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Reporting by Chloe Peterson, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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By Chloe Peterson, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
