The Indiana Fever will set their sights on home-court advantage in the playoffs when they visit the Toronto Tempo on Friday night.
Both teams will be starting the final four-game stretch of the regular season with all eight playoff spots already clinched.
The first-year Tempo (11-29), in 13th place in the standings, have long been eliminated while the Fever (26-14) are playing for a favorable seeding with the top four teams opening their first-round series at home. When the WNBA took a break Aug. 31 for the FIBA Women’s World Cup, the Fever were tied with the Atlanta Dream for fourth.
The Fever have won two in a row and the Tempo have lost four straight.
“We’ve got to finish strong,” Indiana forward Myisha Hines-Allen said. “Coming out of the break, I think we’re playing really well. So just going into these next four games and knowing that the playoffs start in a couple days after that, so just taking the mindset of, ‘All right, we’re trying to win a championship,’ and I think everyone has that mindset, and everyone’s locked in and on that goal.”
Indiana has won both games with Toronto this season, scoring in triple figures each time.
The Tempo announced Wednesday that they will be without guard Marina Mabrey for the rest of the season because of a right adductor injury. She is not expected to need surgery.
Mabrey was averaging a career-best 20.8 points with 3.7 assists and 3.3 rebounds in 32 games this season. She tied the WNBA single-game record by scoring 53 points against the Los Angeles Sparks on June 25.
Mabrey has not played since Aug. 18, when she scored 22 points against the Fever.
Toronto has had to deal with several injuries this season, including guard Brittney Sykes (foot) and forward Aneesah Morrow (knee), who are also out for the season. That leaves rookie Kiki Rice (12.5 ppg) as the Tempo’s active leading scorer.
“I think we have learned a lot about ourselves, haven’t we?” Tempo coach Sandy Brondello said. “We faced a lot of players getting opportunities to put their best foot forward, but we still want to come out and compete hard.
“For the most part, we’ve done that, and we’ve had a very limited roster the whole season long, but we can still fight with the players we have left.”
–Field Level Media
