For the better part of the last two months, no team has appeared to play with as much confidence as the Atlanta Dream.
Fresh off its best regular season in franchise history with 30 wins, No. 3 seeded Atlanta has much more it would like to accomplish. After six straight losing seasons, the Dream hired first-year head coach Karl Smesko, who will lead a long-shot WNBA champion pick into the playoffs.
Smesko has no intention of letting his team overlook the sixth-seeded Indiana Fever in Game 1 of the best-of-three first-round series on Sunday afternoon in College Park, Ga.
Led by Allisha Gray’s 18.4 points per game and Rhyne Howard’s 17.5, Atlanta enters the postseason winners in six straight and 17 of 21 since July 23. Now Smesko has his team in a good spot to advance past the first round for the first time in seven years.
“It’s nice that we’re winning and that we’re in a good position for the playoffs,” Smesko said. “The meaningful part is coming up. Are we going to be the best prepared for the playoffs? Everybody did a lot of work so far this year to get us where we are. We want to make sure that we have the right finish to a great season.”
Indiana will be making consecutive playoff appearances for the first time since appearing in the postseason each year from 2005-16. Impressively, the Fever did most of the work without the help of Caitlin Clark, who played only 13 games before missing the bulk of the year with a nagging groin injury.
Indiana has leaned on Kelsey Mitchell — the league’s third leading scorer at 20.2 points per game — and Aliyah Boston’s 15.0 points and 8.2 rebounds.
Fever head coach Stephanie White has willed her team back into the postseason but is weary of the challenges Atlanta will present.
“Their size at mostly all positions has been a challenge for us,” White said. “We’re going to have to combat that with our discipline. Secondly, the way they space the floor, they do a really good job of doing what (Smesko’s) teams have always done, shooting the 3, but doing it in a different way (by) utilizing their post touches and dominant interior players to score or find open shooters.”
The teams split their four matchups this year, last meeting on July 11 at Indiana when the Fever earned a 99-82 victory.
–Field Level Media
