After an injury-riddled Fever team missing Caitlin Clark came within a win of the WNBA Finals last season, there was plenty of reason to believe 2026 could be a dream campaign for Indiana.
Despite some early-season bumps on the injury front, Clark played in all but four games while Kelsey Mitchell and Aliyah Boston each stayed mostly healthy. It still wasn’t enough for the Fever to escape the first round, where they fell to the third-seeded Las Vegas Aces with a 94-83 loss in Game 3 on Thursday night.
The Aces were never going to be an easy opponent, with A’ja Wilson leading the way and Las Vegas entering the playoffs having won four straight games out of the FIBA World Cup break. Still, it could be argued that the Fever should have never put themselves in position to be as low as the No. 6 seed to begin with.
Here’s what went wrong for Indiana on the way to an early exit.
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What went wrong for Fever in early playoff exit
Defensive struggles
Clark graded the Fever’s defense as an “F” after the Game 1 loss to the Aces. She was right. A’ja Wilson scored 38 points on 15-of-19 from the field, and the Aces shot nearly 60 percent as a team. Indiana didn’t even record a block in the 102-85 loss.
That wasn’t a one-off performance, though. The Fever are the only playoff team that allowed more than 90 points per game in the regular season, and they at one point had a stretch of 19 consecutive games allowing at least 85 points. Four playoff teams, for comparison, didn’t even allow an average of 85 points per game in the regular season.
Putting a troubled defense against the WNBA’s MVP was always going to be a recipe for potential disaster, but the Fever didn’t look as prepared as they could’ve been for a team that knows how to win in the playoffs. Game 3 was only further proof, as Wilson dominated en route to 36 points and 10 rebounds in the Aces’ clincher.
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Turnovers
The Fever were near the middle of the pack this season in turnovers, but four of the five teams that finished ahead of them in the standings averaged fewer turnovers, including the Aces. Indiana committed 16 turnovers in the Game 1 loss to Las Vegas, with Clark herself turning the ball over six times.
Nearly half of those turnovers came in the second quarter, when the Aces scored 35 points and turned a close game into one the Fever couldn’t climb back into. Two of those turnovers came on offensive fouls, and the final two turnovers of the quarter directly allowed Las Vegas to stretch its lead from 10 to 15 before the break.
Indiana is a fast-paced team, so turnovers are unavoidable to some degree. With so many defensive issues, though, the last thing the Fever need is to give the opposing team additional chances to score. An offense-first team that struggles to defend can win by limiting those mistakes. At critical times, the Fever did not do that.
Aliyah Boston’s foul trouble
The defensive issues go hand-in-hand with Aliyah Boston’s struggle to stay on the court due to foul trouble. Boston and Clark both found themselves in foul trouble against the Aces in Game 1, but it’s been more of a recurring issue for Boston, who reached five fouls nine times in 40 games this season and fouled out once.
In certain situations, the Fever can live with that. With A’ja Wilson in the opposing front court, having Boston in foul trouble is a massive setback.
In Game 3, Clark eventually reached five fouls as the Fever trailed in the fourth quarter, including a technical she picked up early in the game for shoving Brianna Turner. Her issues with officials were a storyline all season — and that carried over to the playoffs as well.
As a team, the Fever committed more fouls than every playoff team and every WNBA team other than the Sun and Fire this season. Along with turnovers, these mistakes gave opposing teams an advantage that Indiana sometimes couldn’t afford.
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