The Las Vegas Aces and the Indiana Fever have both secured playoff berths, but they still have positioning to work on as they meet Wednesday in Indianapolis.
Both teams showed resilience in fighting back from large deficits in their last games.
The fourth-place Aces (22-13) rallied from 20 points down to take a late one-point lead before falling to the host New York Liberty 75-71 on Sunday. Las Vegas battled in the absence of MVP candidate A’ja Wilson (lower leg), who’s listed as day-to-day.
“We’re a resilient group. We know how to take a hit,” Aces head coach Becky Hammon said. “I give my team a lot of credit for their fight, sticking together when it got hard, when it got ugly.”
Las Vegas used a 25-6 run to surge in front before seeing their four-game winning streak end.
“Our bench coming in, the ball moved and good things happened,” Hammon said. “They got stops, gave us a chance to crawl back in there and stick our nose in where probably people didn’t think it was going to be.”
Kelsey Plum led the Aces with 25 points and six assists, Jackie Young scored 12 points and Alysha Clark added 11 points and six rebounds.
The sixth-place Fever (19-17) trailed by 16 points in the second half before rallying to defeat the visiting Atlanta Dream 104-100 in overtime on Sunday.
“I’m proud of us,” said Caitlin Clark, who scored 26 points and made two free throws to seal the victory. “I thought we chipped away, we were resilient. We really executed when it mattered most.”
The Fever’s comeback was triggered by improved ball handling as they turned the ball over 12 times in the first half but just three times in the second half.
Similarly, Indiana has gotten better as the season has gone along, following a 1-8 start with 18 wins in 27 games.
“I think (resilience is) one of the biggest ways that we’ve improved over the course of the year,” Clark said, “probably since a little bit before the start of the Olympic break and definitely here in the second half.”
–Field Level Media