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Los Angeles – The Los Angeles Sparks staved off a late-game rally by the Indiana Fever Tuesday to take a 100-91 win.
Kelsey Plum and Rickea Jackson each dropped 25 points for LA, with Plum adding 11 assists for their seventh win in the last eight games. Indiana, despite 34 points from Kelsey Mitchell, saw their five-game winning streak come to an end.
Both teams traded buckets to open the game, with the visitors taking a one-point lead into the second frame. But there, the Sparks outpaced them to take a 54-43 lead at halftime.
A Jackson three-pointer with 6:23 left in the game put LA up 90-68, but the Fever responded with a 21-5 run to cut the lead to 95-89. Azura Stevens, who finished with 19 points, added three with 1:17 remaining to give the Sparks a nine-point lead, which they never relinquished.
Natasha Howard scored 19 points and grabbed 7 rebounds for Indiana, while Aliyah Boston added 15 points and 9 rebounds. The team was without point guard Caitlin Clark, who missed her eighth consecutive game with a groin injury.
LA coach Lynne Roberts said the team has come a long way from where they were going into the Fourth of July weekend, when they had won just five games.
“It’s been really rewarding to see these guys understand what it takes to really win and to hate losing. They’ve turned the corner with that, which is cool,” Roberts said. “I feel like our group’s confident, but they’re humble. There’s not a sense of ‘we’ve arrived,’ because we haven’t. We have not achieved what we said we were gonna do.”
“I’m really proud of this group and I feel like we have enough pieces and talent to make a playoff run. We’ve just got to keep our feet on the gas. We’ve to keep pushing and keep getting better.”
Jackson said the team has come together.
“As a group we’re playing together, our momentum and our energy is really good right now,” she said. “We’re not flinching – we just keep coming and coming.”
The Fever, who have weathered many lineup changes, had also seemed to come together of late. But Howard said they lapsed.
“Tonight we were a step behind on defense, and the Sparks took advantage,” she said.
Coach Stephanie White said she was proud of the group’s resilience to bring themselves into contention in the game’s closing moments. But the Sparks were prepared.
“LA is a really good team,” she said. “Their length causes problems for us, and they did a good job of taking away our main (schemes). Shots didn’t fall, we couldn’t get going in transition because we couldn’t get stops.”
“We’ve got to get better on the defensive end of the floor.”
The Sparks host the Sun on Thursday, while Indiana travels to Phoenix to take on the Mercury.
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