‘Soft’ Fever ‘tucked our tail’ vs. Golden State’s aggressive play, suffer 2nd-half collapse

SAN FRANCISCO – The Indiana Fever didn’t have a lot of fight in them Thursday night.

That could’ve been for a multitude of reasons. They had just played a very physical game against Connecticut two days earlier, and they traveled thousands of miles across three time zones to play at the Chase Center in San Francisco for the first time.

The Fever had a winnable game in front of them. The Valkyries, an expansion franchise, were 5-6 and had five players out because of Eurobasket. It was one they could’ve — and maybe should’ve — won.

But, to put it simply, they weren’t aggressive enough.

“We were soft,” Fever guard Kelsey Mitchell said. “They made us pay by just being stronger and being tougher. 50-50 balls, deflections, getting the passing lanes. That’s just a piece of just being aggressive and having an ability to, like, look at your best player, and be like, ‘Nah, they gonna be aggressive.’ And I think that we allowed it, kind of tucked our tail a little bit tonight, on the aggression side.”

Indiana led for most of the first half against Golden State, despite a poor shooting night from its star Caitlin Clark.

Clark only had two points in the first half, but the Fever still led by six going into halftime with 15 points from Aliyah Boston. That lead ballooned up to 13 points by the midway mark of the third quarter. And that’s when the Fever got complacent.

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Golden State went on a 14-5 run to end the third quarter, then opened the fourth with another 9-2 run. With their sold-out crowd behind them, they had all the momentum and carried that to a comeback 88-77 win over a team that was heralded as championship contenders at the beginning of the season.

It was a stark contrast to Indiana’s game just two days ago against Connecticut — Indiana led by as many as 20 points in the fourth quarter, and the Fever still pushed to a 17-point win.

On Thursday, that fight disappeared.

“I think we get these leads, we get up 10, we get up 12, and I thought that’s where we really grew versus Connecticut, we really took a step forward and kept our foot on the gas and built out our lead and got it up to 20,” Clark said. “I thought we were kind of in the phase of not (giving up those leads) anymore. And then we got our lead to 12 (against the Valkyries), and then we kind of go on a stretch of turning the ball over… We got to be able to grow in that area.”

Clark, who averages 21.3 points per game, was held to 11 points on 3-of-13 shooting Thursday night. She also didn’t make a 3-pointer (going 0-of-6 beyond the arc) for just the second time in her professional career.

That led to a disjointed offense, as the Valkyries used Clark’s off shooting night to their advantage. They didn’t put as much emphasis on her in the second half, allowing them to space out their defense and penetrate passing lanes.

Indiana, in turn, stopped moving the ball as much as it usually does, and its offense became predictable. And the Valkyries never quit.

“We talked about how this team is tough as nails right?” acting head coach Austin Kelly said. “… They never quit playing. It’s in the film. We didn’t do a great job of playing personnel, taking care of first things first at the point of attack … We didn’t bring it for whatever reason out of the locker room, and then that starts to build confidence (in Golden State) with teams clawing and chipping away at a lead. We got to be better in that regard.”

It was a deflating loss to start a seven-day road trip across the West Coast. Indiana will head straight to Las Vegas from San Francisco for a game against the Aces on Sunday, then head up to Seattle to play the Storm on Tuesday.

The travel can be a lot, at times. But the constant focus on another game can also be a good thing.

“I didn’t think we got much better tonight,” Clark said. ”But, you know, the good thing about this league is you play another game a couple days, so we’ll learn from this and get better.”