Caitlin Clark had a rough debut in the playoffs, suffering a black eye in an accident during her team’s loss to the Connecticut Sun.
The Indiana Fever star rookie missed 10 of her first 11 shots before finishing with 11 points and eight assists in the team’s 93-69 loss on Sunday. The Sun’s Alyssa Thompson was the star of the show as she finished with 12 points, 13 assists and 10 rebounds in a massive triple double.
“I felt like we just played a crappy game,” Clark said. “Like the flow of the game was really bad.”
The AP Rookie of the Year also took personal responsibility for the loss, refusing to use the blow to her eye that left her with a bruise as an excuse for her bad night.
“It hit me pretty hard in the eye; I don’t think it affected me,” she said of the injury in the first quarter. “I felt like I had some good shots, they just weren’t going down. Tough time for that to happen. I thought I had some really good shots. Three pretty wide-open 3-pointers in the first half, that’s usually what you make.”
Clark’s shooting woes continued early in the third quarter before the Fever called a timeout. The guard hit a chair on the bench in frustration. That seemed to get her going as she came out and connected on her next three shots. Unfortunately for Indiana, Connecticut guard Marina Mabrey got hot, scoring 11 of her 27 points in the third quarter and the Fever couldn’t recover.
“My shot felt like it was right there,” said Clark, who finished the game making 4 of 17 shots from the field, including missing 11 of her 13 3-point attempts. “It’s so frustrating as a shooter when it doesn’t go your way. That’s what [stink] …We were right there, I think we got it down to eight, but then they came back and scored three points against us.”
The Sun changed their defence in terms of who Clark was guarding. DeWanna Bonner, who is 6ft 4in, took the job for much of the night against the 6ft Clark.
“I accepted the challenge and she will start the next race with a bang,” said Bonner.
Clark gets another chance in Game 2 on Wednesday and hopes to send the series back to Indiana for a decisive Game 3 on Friday.
In Sunday’s other playoff games, Leonie Fiebich hit four 3-pointers and scored a career-high 21 points on 7 of 8 shooting, Breanna Stewart added 20 points and 11 rebounds and the New York Liberty never trailed in their 83-69 win over the Atlanta Dream. Napheesa Collier scored a playoff career-high 38 points and Minnesota blew a 23-point lead before coming back late to beat Phoenix in Game 1 of their series. In the other first-round game, A’ja Wilson scored 21 points and blocked five shots after earning her record-tying third MVP award, and the two-time defending champion Las Vegas Aces held the Seattle Storm to a pair of free throws in the fourth quarter and pulled away for a 78-67 victory. “The MVP MVP’d,” Seattle coach Noelle Quinn said after the game. “She’s MVP for a reason.”