Barring some sort of complete turnaround in game 2 it looks like Indiana is going to be leaving the tournament a lot earlier than a lot of people would have hoped. I am sure the league really wishes they would stick around as well because it is a certainty that the viewership is going to drop a LOT after Indiana is eliminated by Connecticut, which after the game a few days ago seems almost a sure thing.
Almost nothing that Indiana was doing in game 1 was working and a big part of this was the near shutdown of rookie of the year, Caitlin Clark, who as some commentator coined in the 80's "couldn't buy a bucket" for the entire game. She went 2-13 from 3-point range and as any CC fan knows, this is her bread and butter. Also, her counterpart in Kelsey Mitchel also was off her game at 3-point range going 2-10. In fact, all the starters were kind of ice cold especially from 3-point range with the only relief coming from Damaris Dantas, who normally doesn't even play a great deal in any game, let alone a playoff game.
Now there was a play early on where Caitlin got poked in the eye and many apologists out there are attempting to claim that this is why her shooting was off but I don't think that is the case. While an eye-poke is certainly something that hurts really bad, it wasn't intentional on the part of the defense and even Clark herself stated at the post game press conference that it didn't have any effect on her game although it did hurt at the time.
Unfortunately the above image is the best one that exists of the incident but I watched the game and that replay was played back dozens of time during the commentary and it definitely wasn't intentional. Think about how difficult it would be to intentionally eye-poke someone that is constantly moving and very fast. People need to just step off the emotional gas-pedal as far as this is concerned. These things happen. Not everything is a conspiracy.
The fact of the matter is that Connecticut is simply all around a much better team than Indiana is and they have much better depth. While Indiana relies on the young Catiline and Boston combo with Kelsey Mitchell as a backup of sorts on almost every play just kind of shows that Indiana can be successfully defended against by a good team. The Connecticut Sun have had a much better season the entire year and it is showing why that is the case in the game we just watched.
It is rather unfortunate that the Sun are getting 2 home games in a row so if Indiana loses game 2 as well, their home fans aren't even going to get to see their team play at home at all in the playoffs. I'm not sure why they organized it this way in a best-of-3 tournament. It seems to me like it would be substantially more fair to play at least one guaranteed game at both stadiums and have the last one be given to the higher ranked team or whatever it is that they use to determine who gets more games at home.
Caitlin made no excuses after the game and simply said "we had a crappy game, we are going to need to do better in game 2." It is that sort of professionalism that has made her the darling of the league and the superstar that is bringing in so many fans to this sport that previously nobody even bothered to watch. I am still amazed that I remain interested in it but I can tell you this: I am going to be quite unlikely to watch any of the games in Indiana is eliminated. It will be interesting to see how many of the fans tune out if they are eliminated and I would be willing to bet that as far as TV viewership is concerned, they will lose at least half of the audience.
There was no cheating, no unfair referees (aside from that one call where the ball definitely did NOT go out of bounds but was ruled that it did go out and Indiana got a technical foul for protesting "too much") and the fact is simply that Connecticut played a much better game in every single metric that is involved in this sport called basketball. Indiana never got the momentum rolling and were bested in every single quarter.
They seriously need to go back to the drawing board if they even want to have a chance of advancing. Losing your first playoff game 93-69 is a bit embarrassing and the Fever know this. I hope they can pull it together on Wednesday, but unless they do something absolutely magical such as being "hot" from 3-point range, I don't really see that happening. Here's to hoping that they can at least make it look competitive because it would be a shame to end a rather exciting season with a wipeout.