Coming into the game against the Connecticut Sun on Sunday, every fan expected Caitlin Clark to dominate. However, the Sun capitalized on their experience and soon took the lead after the Fever opened their account. Though, the Sun encountered some difficulties such as the injury to Tyasha Harris, by the end of the game they had a comfortable win with a 93-69 margin. And since Clark was hurt in the eye, many fans opined that it was her black eye that had caused the issue. However, denying any such thing, the point guard came to the fore during the postgame press conference to share what transpired on the court that swept away the game from the Fever.

“Obviously got me pretty good in the eye. I don’t think it affected me…. I felt like I got good shots, they didn’t just go down. Obviously, a tough time for that to happen… I had two… three.. pretty wide threes in the first half that like you usually make so, that’s tough. But I felt like I battled and tried my best: took care of the ball, and… better than I usually do. Which is a positive but overall like question in the locker room. We are down 3 first quarter, down 5 second quarter and then lost by 3 in the third,” Clark stated.

Clark faced some trouble tonight as she was hit in the eye mistakenly by the Sun guard DiJonai Carrington. The 22-year-old was looking to pass the ball to her teammate Aliyah Boston when Carrington tried to block the shot. While Clark succeeded in getting the ball to Boston, Carrington’s hand hit Clark’s eye. Although no foul was called for the same, Clark was given time to gain back her composure. Hence, a lot of people speculated if that was the reason behind Clark’s average performance but she made clear that it wasn’t.

The Indiana-based franchise was close to the Sun in the first three quarters. However, it is said that the lead in the first three eventually got the better of the Fever who lost all hope of making a comeback in the fourth. During the first quarter, the Fever trailed by 3 points, in the next individual quarter they were down by 5 whereas in the third they found it difficult to make it equal the Sun’s tally by 3 points. And coming into the fourth quarter, the Fever couldn’t make up for the deficit as they were trailed by a 25-12 margin.

Like we were right there and I felt like we played a crappy game. Like the flow of the game was really bad. I don’t know if that was refereeing and was probably partly us coz we struggle to get stops at times but also like the clock getting messed up, just one thing after the next but Yeah like overall it didn’t bother me. Obviously it didn’t feel too good when it happened but it is what it is,”Clark concluded.

Another point raised by fans was that the reffing was too bad considering the standard of the W. It looked as if the home team – the Connecticut Sun were favored, which led them to win the game. If all of this wasn’t enough, the stop clock during the fourth quarter was also set to 14 seconds instead of 24 which seemed to have presented a disadvantage to the Fever who were in transitional offense. All these factors led to the Fever losing their Game 1 against the Sun on Sunday. However, one major reason that the fans opine was Clark’s abysmal three-pointer performance.

Caitlin Clark’s three-pointer shooting lets the Fever down

Coming into this game, the plan was simple. Clark was to play the role of a three-point shooter, which she is known for, while other teammates create open spaces for themselves. However, at the end of the first quarter, it was clear that the Iowa-alum lacked today at something which was her strength. She missed 3 shots from beyond the arc in the first quarter along with 2 two-pointers. Next, her teammate Kelsey Mitchell was given the task of shooting threes and she too failed to yield beneficial results for her team.

Overall, Clark shot 13 threes but could only score in 2 of them. Thus she cost the Fever a total of 33 points which could have made the difference and maybe Fever would have won the game. Meanwhile, Mitchell too had an average day as she could hit just 2 out of 10 three-pointers. By the end of the fourth quarter, the Sun were positioned at 93 points while the Fever were stranded at 69.

And now the Fever have only one option which is to win Tuesday’s game, or else they will be eliminated from the playoffs and the Sun would advance to the semifinals. Hopefully, Clark will regain her form and make sure not to repeat her mistakes in the next game.