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INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White returned to her home state to win a championship.
She knew that meant navigating a series of obstacles and, of course, a daunting schedule of top teams and great players. She figured with the Fever dubbed a preseason title contender, opponents would play their best against Indiana.
White never envisioned how off script things could go.
An injured right groin and subsequent bone bruise suffered while recovering have kept two-time All-Star guard Caitlin Clark out since July 15, and there’s still no timetable for her return. Backup guards Aari McDonald and Sydney Colson had season-ending injuries in the same game, Aug. 7 at Phoenix. Then Sunday, guard Sophie Cunningham sustained a season-ending knee injury.
Still, with nine regular season games remaining, the resilient Fever are somehow still in playoff position. Indiana held the sixth seed entering Thursday night, two games clear of ninth-place Los Angeles.
“We have a group that’s ready to respond. There’s a difference in reacting to situations and responding to situations and this group responds and that fuels us,” White said. “You’ve got two options, right? You can fight or you can fold, and we aren’t folding.”
Clark previously missed time with two different muscle injuries, and the Fever didn’t give in then, either. Clark injured her left quad in May, then missed the WNBA’s Commissioner’s Cup title game in July because of an injured left groin. The Fever still beat Minnesota 74-59.
This stretch has been far more stressful for everyone, though.
Instead of leaning on the experience and depth team executives added during the offseason, White finds herself juggling lineups, managing roster moves and reteaching Indiana’s playbook.
White entered the league as a player in 1999 and says she can’t remember enduring anything like it.
Clark has missed 22 of the Fever’s 35 games this season, a number that seems almost certain to increase Friday night in the first of two home weekend games against league-leading Minnesota.
After losing to defending champion New York in the first two games of Clark’s latest absence, the Fever reeled off five straight wins. They’re also 2-2 since McDonald and Colson went down — losing by a total of five points. And when Cunningham got hurt Sunday, Indiana rallied from a 21-point deficit to win in overtime at Connecticut. The emotional toll of watching all this, again, brought White to tears in her postgame news conference.
So instead of breaking down what’s been lost, Indiana is fighting back with what it has.
“When I say you have to have a good culture, you have to have good people in your locker room, you have to have decent humans for this thing to keep rolling,” All-Star guard Kelsey Mitchell said. “I think when people have bad days and bad things happen, I think you have to lean on internal relationships with one another to make it not feel so horrible.”
Mitchell has upped her game, averaging a career best 20.4 points while dishing out 3.4 assists, nearly double last season’s total. All-Star center Aliyah Boston has improved her passing this season and has teamed up with forward Natasha Howard to give the Fever a stronger inside presence.
White also wants Mitchell and others to help provide extra energy after losing two of her most vocal players. The combination has everyone believing they can finish strong — with or without Clark.
“I think it’s easy (to give up) when your point guards go down and your top 3-point shooter goes down, it’s hard to stay like happy and want to work for something,” said guard Shey Peddy, Indiana’s newest player. “You can tell everybody’s together here. They still want to fight. They still know we have a chance to make the playoffs. Nobody has given up.”
White wouldn’t expect anything less.
“I told the team at halftime (Sunday), we’ve been dealt a crappy hand, and we’ve got to play it,” she said. “They have been so connected, they have stayed together, and they have found a way and because of that, it’s put us in position to win ballgames and we’re going to continue to battle.”
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AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball
