Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark on Monday showed her persistence, fighting through an injured left ankle, foul trouble and even the frustration that led to an uncharacteristic late technical foul to get her team positioned for their first win.
Then she lamented what the Fever could not finish.
Tyasha Harris scored 13 of Connecticut’s final 18 points, including two free throws with 10.9 seconds left and the game tied, to give the Connecticut Sun an 88-84 victory over the still winless Indiana.
Photo: AP
“I think you could see the progress we’re making and that’s why this one hurts a lot. We were right there and we had plenty of opportunities to go win the game and you don’t,” Clark said. “We’ve played the top teams in the league and we were right there with the Sun today.”
Indiana’s brutal schedule already has included two games against last season’s WNBA runners-up, the New York Liberty, and two more against the Sun, who had the league’s third-best record last season.
The result has been a predictably difficult learning curve — four straight losses, the first three by double digits — for a young team led by the league’s newest star, who played in front of yet another announced sellout crowd on Monday night.
When Clark crumpled to the floor with 5 minutes, 37 seconds left in the first half, grabbing at her lower left leg and grimacing in pain until the game was stopped a few moments later, the Fever’s chances looked lost yet again.
After limping directly into the tunnel near the team bench, retaping her ankle and going through halftime warm-ups with her teammates, Clark was back — and looked more like the two-time national college player of the year during the final quarter than she had during the first 15 quarters of her pro career.
Clark finished with 17 points and five assists, all in the final 10 minutes, while making five of 11 shots and three three-pointers, including a go-ahead three from the Gainbridge Fieldhouse logo that gave Indiana a 70-68 lead with 7:15 to go and brought the crowd to its feet.
“That was a big shot,” she said. “We got the crowd going. I mean, that crowd was incredible.”
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