DALLAS – Workers began tearing down the playing floor almost immediately after the Indiana Fever escaped American Airlines Center with a 94-86 victory over the Dallas Wings on Friday night.
The home team needed that floor back in place for Saturday’s game at their usual home in Arlington. They needed a venue with nearly three times College Park Center’s 7,000-seat capacity for the anticipated star power of Fever guard Caitlin Clark against Wings guard Paige Bueckers.
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Only half of that matchup materialized. Clark watched from the bench with a groin injury while Bueckers scored 18 of her 27 points in the final 20 minutes. She led the Wings’ surge back from a 23-point deficit to a one-point fourth-quarter lead.
Friday nearly unfolded as another late-game Fever collapse — their second in as many nights. Instead, the Fever’s other stars answered. With no certainty yet as to when Clark will return, a team stared down a potentially disheartening loss and instead found resolve.
Kelsey Mitchell scored a season-high 32 points with six assists. Aliyah Boston continued her recent strong play with 21 points and six rebounds. They nearly overshadowed Natasha Howard’s 15-point, 14-rebound double-double, highlighted by multiple crucial baskets in the final minutes.
The Fever remain a star-led team, but led by more than one.
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“We saw more (attention to detail) at various points,” coach Stephanie White said. “We didn’t see it for 40 minutes. But on the second half of a back-to-back, sometimes that’s to be expected.
“I think we did a great job of weathering the storm and then in that fourth quarter, particularly in that moment when they went up one — that’s when we saw it.”
Where it all (almost) went wrong
This could have been — perhaps should have been — more about this game’s start than its finish.
White started Aari McDonald — recently brought back for her second stint this season — in search of a better start to the game. How’s 19-3, the score by which they led after the first five-plus minutes. The Fever made seemingly every shot, and with their opponent deprived of transition chances, stifled Dallas in the half court.
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Indiana’s lead peaked at 23 in the first quarter. Bueckers struggled to find her shot. It appeared the Fever might take some of the peril out of their first back-to-back of the season by building an insurmountable lead.
Even as the Fever kept up that torrid shooting, they began to leak points in other areas. Bueckers stole the ball in the final seconds and chucked up a 3 from barely inside half court which beat the buzzer. That previously imposing lead dwindled to 13 at halftime.
The Wings, playing in front of a franchise-record crowd, kept coming. They did not take a lead, however, until JJ Quinerly’s conventional three-point play with 5:29 to play. Dallas led 80-79, and it all had to seem very familiar to a Fever team which blew an eight-point lead entering the fourth quarter against L.A. on Thursday.
Pros who have won met the moment
Dallas expended considerable energy during that comeback. Yet the game trend did not exactly favor a Fever team playing its second game in 24 hours, with a late-night flight in between.
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A big gut check summoned some big plays.
Down one now, Mitchell answered with a 3 at the other end. Over the next 109 seconds, she and Howard combined for 12 points and three assists to each other. That flourish flipped a game on the brink of disaster to a 91-82 lead with 2:11 to play.
Mitchell had not scored in the fourth quarter before the 3-pointer which erased the Wings’ only lead. Her playmaking, though, had been integral to that emphatic start and the uber-efficient offense which carried into the third quarter. She also took the lead on the defensive assignment against Bueckers.
After the game, Wings coach Chris Koclanes admitted the Fever’s physicality bothered his team. In large part, that stemmed from Howard and Boston, who helped set that tone around the rim with 13 first-half points.
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Howard capped that 12-2 run with a back-breaking and-one leaner. By then she had already secured her third double-double — all in the past two-and-a-half weeks.
“Tasha’s a pro, and she’s done it and she’s won,” Mitchell said. “People don’t really understand the kind of pros we have on our team — the ones that have won.”
A sense of urgency rediscovered
The Fever must solve how to avoid the plunge which forced those stars to lift them back to victory Friday.
They also saw they can win without Clark, even when the opposing face of the franchise continues her ascent with skill and bravado. Fans in both cities will have another chance to see Clark and Bueckers face off. The Wings come to Gainbridge Fieldhouse on July 13.
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Yet the Fever also reinforced they can win without Clark and the gravity with which she creates within the offense. Her replacement, McDonald — only added back to the roster when DeWanna Bonner and the front office came to an amicable split — followed up Thursday’s 14-point performance with 13 more.
“They’re a complete team,” Bueckers said after losing to the incomplete version of the Fever.
That may have been the crux of her point. They may have missed their most visible star again, but the others found their sense of urgency.
“Once again, leads did slip away in this game, and last game,” Boston said. “But for us it’s about making sure we turn that page, we get back the lead, we keep it, we get big defensive stops. It’s a game of runs and you just have to make sure you have the best one at the end.”
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: No Caitlin Clark, but other Fever stars step up to beat Dallas
