On Thursday, veteran guard Jewell Loyd and the Seattle Storm (4-3) will seek to extend a three-game winning streak — and continue a challenging rookie campaign for Caitlin Clark.
Clark comes in off her best scoring game as a pro, but the Indiana Fever (1-7) are still reeling heading into this matchup in Indianapolis.
When the two teams met May 22 in Seattle, the Storm needed Loyd’s 32 points to carry them to an 85-83 win.
A season ago, Loyd was the WNBA’s leading scorer.
The 2015 Rookie of the Year is averaging 19.4 points per game this season, while the Storm are showing significant improvement from an 11-29 mark a season ago.
Following the recent victory over the Fever, Loyd said: “It’s never about one player. It’s never about the other team. It’s always about us…. We’ve got to understand who we are and let that ride us.”
Loyd was on her season pace with 19 points in Tuesday’s 77-68 win over the Chicago Sky that pushed the Storm over .500 for the first time since 2022.
Skylar Diggins-Smith added 21 points and the Storm had 13 steals while forcing 21 Sky turnovers.
Meanwhile, the Fever stay home off an 88-82 loss to the Los Angeles Sparks on Tuesday. Clark had a career-best 30 points, including 13-for-15 at the foul line, but the Sparks were 14-for-23 3-point attempts to grab the victory.
“What we were doing early to them in our schemes, we stopped doing in the second half,” Fever coach Christie Sides said. “Sixty percent from the 3, you don’t give a chance.”
It’s been an up-and-down season for Clark, who is scoring 17.3 points per game. The rookie is fourth in the league in assists per game, with 6.3, but also has committed the league’s most turnovers, at 5.5 per contest.
“I tried to play with an aggressive mindset,” Clark said after Tuesday’s game. “I thought we did some good things and then we kind of just shoot ourselves in the foot.”
