Since CC went away injured, to suggest that the Indiana Fever have struggled is putting it lightly. The fact that their team depends on her for basically 50% or more of their points is evident when she is not on the court. Although I think most people were very concerned and disappointed that she couldn't play in the past several games, I am happy to see it happen now, rather than later in the season.
Immediately after Caitlin was sidelined it was pretty obvious that the team really didn't know how to get things started without her and they just got the ball to Aliyah Boston over and over again and while she was able to convert on many of these, this is asking way too much of the center who already had a big job to do on both offense and defense. The coach tried to help out with this by putting an additional bigger girl one the court but come on guys, everyone knows who the ball is really going to.
The thing that people are realizing now that they maybe didn't before, and the detractors are taking notice as well, is that Caitlin Clark didn't actually need to score all the points herself, there are times in fact where she seems to just be "Ice cold" and cannot sink a shot, but one thing always is apparent with Clark: She is a playmaker. This is why she is almost always double-teamed and a lot of the Indiana plays are specifically designed to pull the defense to double mark her and therefore leave someone like Lexie Hull or Kelsey Mitchell open for an easy shot. Kelsey Mitchel has been doing her best to try to sub for Caitlin, but she just doesn't have the assist vision that Clark does and that is not a dig at Kelsey, nobody has Caitlin's assist vision in the entire WNBA.
So in their recent game against the Washington Mystics who are not a great team but actually have beaten Indiana just a week ago, Indiana tried out what appeared to be a completely different approach at the point, primarily.
What they are doing is not having an apparent point guard, there is no one primary play-caller and this kind of throws off the defense. Who is going to be running point? Will it be Mitchel? Will it be Sydney Colson? Could it even be a forward like Lexie Hull? This approach was used vs. Washington and it appeared to be very effective.
Although the most points were scored by Mitchell, there was also a pretty even distribution of assists across the table as well. The reason why Mitchell had the most points was because she was on fire, not that she was being a ball hog.
Lexie Hull, as usual was very conservative with the number of shots she took, but had a very good percentage going 6-9 overall and 2-4 on 3-pointers.
They played solid defense as well and held Washington to a mere 50% field goal percentage. Don't get to excited about that stat though, because Washington actually had a higher percentage than Indiana did.
Another thing that Indiana did differently this time and is actually really difficult to pull of in basketball is that they were rotating the bench frequently. 3 bench players spent around 20 minutes in the game and not many teams ever even try this. If it works out, it can really throw the defense for a loop and at least in this game, it appears to have worked.
Largely because of a dominant 3rd quarter , the Fever cruised to a 9 point victory that could have been more had they not let off the gas towards then end of the 4th where victory was already guaranteed.
Washington is not a perimeter capable team though and this was evidenced by their pathetic 3-point shot percentage of just 10% and almost all of those missed shots were taken in the 4th quarter.
The Fever get a pretty good sized break starting today until Saturday, where it is rumored that Clark might actually play against rivals Chicago. That all has to be declared beforehand though, so we should know for sure by Thursday if she is going to play or not.
I like this look that Indiana put up tonight though. For the first time they didn't look completely helpless without Caitlin and that is something that every team should plan for. You can't have all of your chances of victory riding on a single player.