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The Las Vegas Aces traveled to Indiana to take on the Caitlin Clark-less Fever hoping to build on momentum from a thrilling victory over the Phoenix Mercury the game before.
Instead, the opposite occurred.
The Aces trailed the entire game and were routed by the Fever 81-54 on Thursday. So one-sided was the game that Aces coach Becky Hammon waved the white flag about midway through the fourth quarter, pulling her starters with 6:32 remaining in the game.
After the loss, a frustrated Hammon held nothing back, tearing into her team for its lackluster showing against the Fever.
“That’s a complete lack of professionalism to come here with that effort,” Hammon said. “They played better yesterday in practice by a lot. I don’t know how you step onto the floor with 20,000 people in the stands and perform like that. It is the worst offensive night I’ve ever seen [since] I’ve been here in the last four years.”
The lone bright spot offensively for the Aces was three-time MVP A’Ja Wilson, who scored a game-high 29 points on 9-for-18 shooting from the field. The rest of the Aces? They shot a combined 7 of 43 for just 25 points. As a team, Las Vegas shot 26.2 percent from the field and committed 19 turnovers.
Both teams struggled from three-point range, but it was the Fever who found success on the inside, drawing the ire of Hammon, who felt the Aces were both outplayed and outhustled.
“They were in the paint [getting] downhill layups all night,” Hammon said. “I don’t really have any answers for you. The effort and the focus just were not there. I thought they were grabbing and holding us, so it’s a rugby match. My team doesn’t want to play rugby, so we get our ass kicked. There has to be some fight back if they’re going to allow that kind of physicality. My team has to step up and match that physicality, period.
“One team is fickle, and one team is not. One team is three steps behind, one team is not. They got all the 50/50 balls. They busted our ass in every kind of way. There’s just no bones about it. It’s one of the worst games I’ve ever seen.”
It’s a bit of a head-scratching effort from an Aces team that just defeated the team with the third-best record in the league, the Mercury, while snapping the club’s six-game winning streak. That they could perform in that manner and then lose by 27 their next time out has left even Hammon confounded.
“If I knew which one was coming, I could prepare myself a little bit better,” Hammon continued. “We go out to Phoenix. That was the best team in the league going into that night, and we put a solid four quarters together. Tonight, we put a third quarter together and, [other than] that, three quarters of trash. The offense was trash. The defense was trash. And at some point, you have to say that’s a little more us, because it’s happened [against] multiple opponents.”
