Fort Wayne Mad Ants reach G League playoffs for first time since 2018
The Indiana Pacers G League affiliate team, the Fort Wayne Mad Ants, clinched a spot in the G League playoff field on Saturday.
The Mad Ants defeated the Blue Coats 125-121 that night, which moved them into the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference. That made them the final team to reach the postseason group, Fort Wayne will hold the final seed in the field.
"It would be a great feeling," Fort Wayne head coach Tom Hankins said of what making the playoffs would mean when the Mad Ants had two games left. "That would be a great accomplishment."
The Mad Ants lost five games in a row to fall to 13-14 late in their season, and it looked like they would not be a playoff team at that point. Injuries and rapidly changing player availability hurt their chances.
But the group rallied and won all of their last five games to finish the season at 18-14, and thanks to some complicated tiebreakers, that landed Fort Wayne ahead of the Lakeland Magic and Windy City Bulls in the standings. They closed the regular season strong to reach the playoffs for the first time since 2018.
That year, the Mad Ants lost in the Conference Semifinals to the Erie BayHawks. The most recent postseason win for Fort Wayne came in 2017, when they beat the Maine Red Claws in a first round game.
This is Fort Wayne's first playoff appearance under Hankins. "We've got good leadership from some veterans," the head coach said last weekend. "We lead the league in assists all year. That's really been one of the special things is how much this team likes to pass the ball."
The Mad Ants have been led on the court by Justin Anderson, Gabe York, and two-way contract guard Trevelin Queen, who has grown off the floor this season. All three players have experience with the Pacers, and York has won G League Player of the Week multiple times this season.
Jermaine Samuels and David Stockton have been effective for Fort Wayne throughout the campaign as well, and the midseason acquisitions of former NBA guards Jordan Bone and Elfrid Payton have elevated the team.
The Mad Ants open postseason play on March 28 against the Capital City Go-Go. The game will air on NBA TV and will be played in Entertainment and Sports Arena. Fort Wayne and Capital City split their two battles during the season.
If the Mad Ants win that game, they will play Delaware on March 30. Once their season ends, two-way contract players Kendall Brown and Queen will spend the rest of their campaigns with the Pacers, though Brown has been with the NBA club of late as he rehabs from surgery.
"It'd just be amazing," Queen said of the Mad Ants making the playoffs. He won a G League title last season with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, and now, he will help Fort Wayne try to do that for the first time since the 2014 season.
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