“That’s our goal. Making the playoffs is our goal … we have to keep getting better to put ourselves where we aren’t hoping people are losing games,” head coach Christie Sides said last week.
Currently, the Fever sit in seventh place in the WNBA, a postseason qualifying spot. They have a three-game edge with 14 games to go. That sounds great, but there are two sides to Indiana’s story right now.
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On one hand, the team’s recent highs have been dramatically high. Indiana took down New York at Gainbridge Fieldhouse for their best win of the season, and Liberty wing Sabrina Ionescu called it the Fever’s “Super Bowl Game” during her post-game comments. Six days later, the Fever crushed the Mercury, then they hit the road for a terrific win over the Minnesota Lynx. Indiana’s star players were putting up numbers. Their defense was good enough. Those outings are what the team hopes to be all the time.
And yet, in that same stretch, the Indiana Fever reached shocking lows. They fell at home to the Washington Mystics, who were in last place at the time. According to Sides, they were dealing with a “team matter” for that game, and NaLyssa Smith came off the bench to open the proceedings. The team’s lineups were unusual all night.
One week later, the Fever fell to the team currently in last place, as the Dallas Wings scored 101 points in regulation. In total, three of Indiana’s last five losses were to teams with a worse record. In those outings, defense looked optional. Rebounding suffered. They looked undermanned despite having three All-Stars.
Taken together, the Fever’s recent results are just confusing. The highs are incredible, the lows equally poor. They’re a young team, and some inconsistency is to be expected. But they hope to win, and they put those expectations on themselves. It hasn’t happened consistently, and they’re dropping winnable games after massive victories.
“For me it’s kind of frustrating. I feel like we’ve left two games out there that are very winnable for us. The Mystics at home and [Dallas],” guard Caitlin Clark said. “Then we’ve won other match-ups that are really tough for us … so I think that’s the biggest area for our team to grow in the last 14 games of the year.”
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The Indiana Fever had been searching for a signature win for a while. Their first seven wins came against teams behind them in the standings, before they finally topped Phoenix on June 30. It gave them a swagger, and they’ve had three excellent wins since that date.
The Fever’s confidence is higher, their attention to detail more noticeable. Their defensive focus doesn’t drop as often. Yet when those things do disappear, the team crashes. Their losses are rough and feature putrid defense. It looks like a totally different team than the Fever side who can beat some of the league’s best — and opponent quality has little to do with it.
“You can’t leave these opportunities on the table. Right now we’re back and forth between seventh and eighth place in this league,” Clark said. “Every game matters.”
This is where the fate of the 2024 Indiana Fever will lie: in their consistency. They need some, yet they have none. Defensive effort, rebounding intensity and other intangibles can’t come and go. Their playoff chase requires daily successes.
When those little wins happen, Indiana looks incredible. The team is 11-1 when it allows under 88 points in a game this season. Otherwise, Indiana’s winless. It’s clear what the Fever have to do to win.
Recently, when things click defensively, Indiana has looked incredible. It can, and has, beaten almost anyone when that happens. The Fever get stops and run in transition. As a result, their offense looks more connected, and that lessens the need to defend in transition. There is a version of the Indiana Fever that is a top-six team, and it all comes down to their defense.
Indiana comes out of the Olympic break with games against Phoenix, Seattle, Minnesota and Atlanta. Success in those games for the Fever will be measured by the result, but it also needs to be measured by their consistency.
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