In a battle for playoff position, the visiting Indiana Fever travel to College Park, Ga., on Monday to take on the Atlanta Dream.
Entering Monday, the Fever (13-16) lead the Chicago Sky by two games for the seventh seed, while Atlanta (10-18) sits a half-game behind Chicago for the eighth and final postseason slot.
Following the month-long break for Olympic play, Indiana has won two of three, but fell 90-80 on Saturday at the hands of the Minnesota Lynx.
After trailing by 13 points after the first quarter, the Fever battled back to cut their halftime deficit to just one. Ultimately, 23 points from Caitlin Clark and 21 from Kelsey Mitchell weren’t enough as Minnesota’s Napheesa Collier tallied 31 points to lead all scorers.
“I think we could have executed a little better on offense, but (Minnesota’s) a really good defensive team,” Clark said. “We were a little stagnant, we probably didn’t get out in transition as much as we would’ve liked, but we also did some good things that we can learn from.”
Clark’s 17.9 points per game lead the team and rank 10th in the league. In her historic rookie campaign, Clark’s 8.3 assists per game are the most in the WNBA. Mitchell is second on the team with 17.8 points per contest. Either Clark or Mitchell has paced Indiana in scoring in eight of the team’s last nine games.
Atlanta is hanging on by a thread in the playoff picture with the regular season less than a month from concluding.
The Dream entered the Olympic break on an eight-game losing streak, but wins against the Seattle Storm, Connecticut Sun and Phoenix Mercury have Atlanta believing they can contend for that final spot. The Dream did have their three-game winning streak snapped on Friday, dropping the second of a two-game set with Phoenix, 82-80.
Atlanta hung around throughout the game, with Allisha Gray’s team-high 22 points nearly extending the Dream’s winning ways.
“I thought our group showed tons of resilience,” Atlanta head coach Tanisha Wright said. “We had players in foul trouble early, which can be hard to bounce back from, but the resiliency this group showed to get us back in the game and really compete at a high level, I’m very proud.”
Rhyne Howard leads Atlanta with 16.3 points per game, followed by Gray’s 15.9.
–Field Level Media
