When the Indiana Fever had a ton of injuries including more than half of their starters about 2 months away from the end of the season, most people that were paying attention really expected them to simply fade away. They added 3 players to their roster that had never played a game with the other players prior to this last ditch-effort. I, like most people, expected this to just be "enough to make it to the end of the year" and didn't really expect them to do anything major. However, at that point they had already qualified for the playoffs based on their performance up to that point and didn't actually NEED a profound end of the season to get in the tournament.
They did ok, but ended up in the tournament as a lower seed on the bottom of the bracket, and the very first team they were up against had a winning record against them, even before they lost all their starters. So I was stunned just like the rest of the basketball world was when they won that series 2-1 and advanced to play against Las Vegas Aces, who are likely the best women's basketball team in the world.
The Fever went into game one in Las Vegas as massive underdogs and stunned everyone again but winning the first game in the series by a very large margin that could have been larger if they had played full force to the final whistle.
lead by Kelsey Mitchell, the Fever were holding their own but LV kind of showed what they are truly capable in games 2 and 3 where the Aces won by 22 points in game 2 and 12 points in game three. Just like when Indiana won the first game by 16, this lead could have been much higher if the lead team played 100% to the final whistle.
It looked like Indiana was getting put in their place when out of nowhere the Fever took control of game 4 in the 1st quarter and never looked back. They even controlled the 4th quarter and stayed out of foul trouble. They won by 6 with Kelsey Mitchel and Aliya Boston combining for 49 of the team's 90 points.
Game 5 had to be the last one because first team to 3 wins.
They were playing back in Las Vegas this time and I tuned in a bit late to the game only to see that it was neck-in-neck the whole way through the game. It even went to overtime and it could be anyone's game. That was when Las Vegas figured it all out though and when Aliyah Boston fouled out of the game in overtime, the defense just collapsed and Indiana got absolutely worked in the overtime period and were outscored 21-12.
They were the underdog team for sure and honestly, they shouldn't have made it that far.
Kelsey Mitchell suffered a bad knee injury late in the game so I think it is best that they lost the game because if they hadn't, they would be facing Phoenix in the finals with now 4 of their 5 starters out injured.
I have been watching basketball my entire life and have never seen a team lose so many of their players in just a couple of months. It may have happened sure, but I am not aware of any team having 4/5 of their starting lineup brought down like this.
I think that Indiana had a very fine run and certainly surprised a bunch of people and given the injuries, they should have been eliminated in round 1. Had they somehow managed to win this game I think the finals would be a sweep because honestly, Mitchell was the last star holding the team together and scoring around 1/3 or more of the team's overall points in nearly every game. With her gone, they don't really have a lot of offensive weapons remaining.
Here's the entire game's highlights with no commercials, if you care.
perhaps it is best they got knocked out and they can hold their heads high. Nobody expected them to get this far and maybe during this off-season the management can find a way to turn these new additions to the team into a solid team that can truly take the league by storm next year.
When Caitlin Clark returns next season with Sophie Cunningham AND Kelsey Mitchell... it's difficult to imagine anyone being able to take them all on.