Caitlin Clark kicked off her WNBA career on Friday night as the Indiana Fever played in a preseason game against the Dallas Wings. The fans showed out to see Clark make her WNBA debut and the cheapest tickets for the game were over $100… for a preseason game. The Wings ended up taking down the Fever, 79-76, but Clark had a great game in her debut.
Caitlin Clark dominated the college basketball scene when she was at Iowa, but the WNBA is a different story. Everyone was wondering how she would perform against the best of the best, and she showed up in her first game. Clark finished with 21 points on 6/15 shooting and she was 5/13 from three. She also added two assists and three rebounds.
The Fever didn’t get the win, but overall, Clark was pretty happy with how the team looked. It’s just preseason, so this a good time to work on things and get better without having the pressure of needing to win basketball games.
“I thought we played really hard,” Clark said after the game in an interview. “Just a great atmosphere for women’s basketball, I think it’s a good kickoff to the WNBA season. I think the way we played, I think there were some things that we could’ve executed a little bit better, I thought we could’ve gotten into our offense a little bit better. The pace was amazing, that’s fun basketball, people like to watch, but overall, definitely what I expected.”
Playing in the WNBA is new to Clark and transitioning from college to the pros can be difficult. This preseason will be big for her in terms of learning what the WNBA is going to be like and growing her game to get her ready for the regular season.
“I think just the little things, knowing when to push in transition and knowing when to slow up and run our offense a little bit better,” Clark said in regards to what can be improved going forward. “I think overall our defense was pretty good, I think we could’ve gotten better in some areas. I thought we could’ve passed the ball a little bit better, but overall a lot to learn from, this is a learning experience for us, this doesn’t count. Go back and watch some film, film doesn’t lie and learn from that.”
Caitlin Clark will make her regular season debut soon
Friday night’s game was just a preseason a battle, and the Fever have one more preseason game next week as they will be taking on the Atlanta Dream on Thursday night. That will be the last preseason game for Indiana before the regular season gets going.
Caitlin Clark will make her highly anticipated WNBA regular season debut on May 14th as the Fever will be hitting the road to take on the Connecticut Sun. That game will get going at 7:30 ET and it will be airing on ESPN2. The Sun are currently favored by 5.5 points. All eyes in the basketball world will be on that one.
