I am still in awe that I am now a fan of the WNBA but Caitlin Clark has really turned that sport around for me and millions of other people who only recently became fans because of her. She has revolutionized the sport and has turned it into something that people actually want to see.
She keeps setting record after record and in the eyes of most that aren't being racist, she is a dead-lock for the Rookie of the Year award in 2024. If she doesn't get it, there will and should be some great controversy that is kicked up.
She mostly is an amazing player but her recent game that took place against Atlanta was not her best performance despite the fact that she scored 26 points.
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This picture appears to have been taken before the game but her head was probably held a bit low after the game as well because this game went to overtime and a lot of this has to do with one of the things that unfortunately has become the only stat that Caitlin Clark has that I am sure she would rather not: Turnovers.
Caitlin turns over the ball a lot and like I have said in the past this has a lot to do with the fact that she has lightning quick passes that are high risk. Sometimes these passes are right on the money but they are too quick or "perfect" for her teammates to receive the ball. Other times they are simply the case of her losing the ball in traffic but most of her turnovers are because of missed passes.
In this game she had 9 TO's and this is way too many. I don't know how many of those turnovers were turned into points for the opposition but I would be willing to bet that it was at least a few of them.
The other thing that hurt the Indiana Fever was that Caitlin was cold as ice as far as her 3-point shooting was concerned.
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The fact that she normally has fantastic 3-point capability is what makes her so difficult to guard and it is a major part of the Indiana Fever's offence. They run the pick and roll on almost every set play and this doesn't necessarily mean that she is going to go for the 3, but it often does and when she is hot, this can mean a boatload of points for the Fever. But in yesterday's game she was the opposite of hot and it was a large part of the reason why this game was even close. At times it looked like Indiana was going to lose this game and honestly, they are a much better team than Atlanta and that would have been terrible.
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Here you can see all the shots that Caitlin took in the entire game and the 3 pointers were just abysmal. She went 4-13 on 3-pointers and at some point she must have been seriously rattled because while the play was calling for her to make these shots, she simply couldn't do it. She made nearly every shot she attempted inside the arch, so I wonder why they didn't transition to doing more of that?
The real star from range in this game was a player that probably doesn't get talked about as much as it should be and that is Lexie Hull
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Lexie didn't get the ball very often during this game but when she did, at least from 3-point range, she took all the glory making 4 out of 5 of them. Without this alternate long-range shooter on the court, Indiana might have been screwed since they were already using Aliyah Boston as much as they could, as her 30 points would indicate.
While Caitlin was not up to par on her normal shooting, she did manage 12 assists which means that she was responsible for half of the overall points that were scored by Indiana the entire game. This has become just a normal thing as far as she is concerned.
Indiana would have lost this game had it not been for a missed jump shot by Atlanta with just half a second remaining in the 4th quarter. Another snafu happened in OT towards the end of the game when Indiana ended up with a shot clock violation that resulted in a turnover with just 33 seconds remaining. Also, I was previously singing the praises of Lexie Hull but with just 14 seconds remaining she missed 2 free throws in a row that would have put Indiana comfortably 6 points ahead. Instead they ended up being just 2 points ahead with 4 seconds remaining. It was Caitlin to the rescue because on the inbound pass Atlanta intentionally fouled her hoping that she would miss a free-throw so they could get another chance at tying the game. Caitlin almost never misses free throws though and in this game she made all 8 that she took in the game.
This performance should be a learning experience for the head coach though. When Caitlin isn't hitting her 3-point attempts, it might not be a terrible idea to adjust the offense to cycle away from having her launch one after the other when they simply aren't going in. Every time she launched a 3 us Indiana fans were hopeful, but we were let down time and time again. Had this been against a good team and not the 2nd worst team in the Eastern Conference, the end result would have been very different.
This is something that the Fever need to think a great deal about before we get to the playoffs.
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Unfortunately I don't think that is really an option for Indiana and they are using her up as much as they can. She plays almost the entire game, every game. This could end up shortening her career but at the moment she is really young and she can take it. If she were to get injured, her team would be in deep deep trouble.
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