Fever Have a Clear Goal for End-Of-Season ‘Sprint’ After World Cup Break
While Caitlin Clark, Aliyah Boston, and Stephanie White are at the World Cup in Berlin with USA Basketball, their teammates are working out in Indiana, preparing for the final stretch of the regular season and the playoffs.
The Indiana Fever have four regular-season games left—one each against the Toronto Tempo and Washington Mystics and back-to-back games against the Minnesota Lynx. While Minnesota is pretty much locked into the number-one seed and Toronto is eliminated from the playoffs, every single one of those games has huge implications for the Fever. Currently in fifth place, the Fever are tied with the Atlanta Dream and just one game behind the third-placed Las Vegas Aces. They also only have a thin two-game lead over the New York Liberty, Mystics, and Dallas Wings.
Every game could make the difference between going into the playoffs with home-court advantage in a brutal first-round series or having to win on the road to advance. The Fever do not want to let the opportunity of securing home-court advantage pass by.
“I think they understand the importance of getting home court heading into the playoffs and the opportunity,” assistant coach Briann January told reporters in a post-practice media availability, per a video on the Fever’s YouTube channel. “We have a great opportunity to get home court heading into the playoffs, and it’s a sprint from here.”
The first round is a best-of-three series with the higher seed hosting Games 1 and 3 and the lower seed hosting Game 2. The Fever generally have a great home-court advantage and have a 14-6 record at home this season. But their fans also travel well, and they can win big games on the road.
The Fever can win on the road if they have to
Securing home-court advantage would be ideal for the Fever, but if they have to win on the road to advance to the second round, there’s no reason to believe that they can’t. They have a 12-8 record on the road so far this season, beating the Mystics, Dream, and Aces in their home arenas as well as several non-playoff teams.
Moreover, they survived without home-court advantage last year. They beat the Dream in Atlanta in Game 3 of their first-round series—and that was without Caitlin Clark and several other key players. In the semifinals, they also stole Game 1 on the road in Las Vegas against the eventual champions.
Given that the Dream and Fever have a very good chance of meeting in the 4-5 matchup, Indiana’s history of winning in Atlanta is an encouraging sign.
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Elaine Blum covers women’s basketball for On SI from Europe. She has been writing about women's hoops since 2023 and holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism and a master’s degree in American Studies with a focus on women’s and gender studies. She started playing basketball when she was 10 years old and won several league and state championships at the youth and senior level.