The Indiana Fever open the franchise’s 25th season on Tuesday night at the Connecticut Sun for the first of four matchups this season. So many eyes will be on the team as Caitlin Clark makes her WNBA debut.
The debut is so highly anticipated that it will be available to stream on Disney Plus and broadcast nationally on ESPN2. They’ve tried to answer the question how to watch in as many ways as possible. It’s the first chance for fans to see Clark in a professional setting since she left Iowa after a second consecutive trip to the final four not that long ago.
The high-level of interest that Clark, the first overall pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft, has brought to the W has helped the league finally be able to get chartered flights for all teams who were previously flying commercial. The Fever enjoyed the first chartered flight as they headed to Connecticut.
In Indiana’s two preseason matchups this year, Clark scored a team-high 21 points against the Dallas Wings, and then followed up with 12 points and a team-high eight rebounds against the Atlanta Dream.
Clark’s debut alongside 2023 No. 1 draft pick and last year’s unanimous WNBA Rookie of the Year, Aliyah Boston, mark the fourth time in WNBA history a team selected No. 1 overall picks in consecutive seasons. The two should become a powerful duo for the Fever for years to come.
Fever guard Kelsey Mitchell enters her seventh season with Indiana as the second leading scorer in franchise history, while forward NaLyssa Smith and guard Erica Wheeler round out a talented rotation. Mitchell averaged 18.2 points and was the team’s leading scorer last season and Smith led the team in rebounds with 9.2 per game last year. Smith scored a team-high 21 points in last Thursday’s preseason contest against the Dream. Wheeler became the first player in franchise history in 2023 to record at least 200 assists in a regular season.
Fever forward Katie Lou Samuelson returns to familiar stomping grounds Tuesday as she spent her college career at the University of Connecticut, becoming the Huskies’ No. 5 all-time leading scorer with 2,342 career-points. Indiana signed Samuelson, who enters her fifth season in the WNBA, early in 2024 as a free agent
Along with Clark, the Fever used the No. 15 draft pick this year to select Ohio State guard Celeste Taylor in the 2024 WNBA Draft. Taylor was named the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year this season by the conference’s coaches, a year after earning ACC Defensive Player of the Year honors at Duke.
The Indiana Fever have their first home game on Thursday night against the New York Liberty.
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