Stephanie White Details Fever's Biggest Challenges Before 2025 WNBA Season

The Indiana Fever have already made a ton of moves this offseason that, on paper, would appear to put them in a great position to succeed during the 2025 WNBA season.

These include making Stephanie White their new head coach along with a plethora of roster additions and upgrades that provide crucial depth and round out Indiana's roster nicely.

However, a team looking better on paper doesn't guarantee success. There are still on-court challenges the Fever will need to address if they're to realize their potential in this upcoming season. And Stephanie White alluded to arguably the biggest one during her February 18 Q&A interview with Richard Deitsch of The Athletic.

"The biggest challenge for this group is we’ve gotta go from 11th or 12th in the defensive end of the floor to the middle of the pack," White said in the article. "Because there are gonna be days where our shots aren’t falling. There are going to be days where we’re not great offensively. There are really good defensive teams and players in our league that are gonna make us uncomfortable. So we have to get to the middle of the pack on the defensive end of the floor.

"But I’m excited about that. I’m excited about the challenges that we have with our group. We got a lot of length and size and the ability to stretch the floor and shoot the ball — and we’re gonna use it," she added.

At another point, White said, "Where we can improve is our ability to score off of cuts with this roster. We can use a lot of off-ball screening action with the lineup that we have. I think we can force mismatches and look to attack mismatches a little bit more."

Q&A: Stephanie White on handling Caitlin Clark mania, broadcasting and the Fever https://t.co/fVXiihwPMP
— The Athletic WBB (@TheAthleticWBB) February 18, 2025

The Fever's 107.5 defensive rating in 2024 was the second-worst in the WNBA. If they can indeed improve that, the sky would seem to be the limit.

Recommended Reading: