Fever vs. Storm: Caitlin Clark's WNBA-Record 12th Game With 20 Points and 10 Assists Beats Seattle 89-78

Aliyah Boston had never missed a game as a pro. She came into Sunday having played 275 straight, counting her four years at South Carolina, and then a lower right leg injury from Indiana's last game finally put her on the wrong side of the box score. So the Fever handed the whole thing to Caitlin Clark, which remains a pretty solid emergency plan.

The Indiana Fever got their first home win of the season, 89-78 over the Seattle Storm at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, and Clark's line of 21 points, 10 assists and seven rebounds was the reason. Games with at least 20 points and 10 assists: Clark now has 12, the most in WNBA history. She did this one in 24 minutes.

An Early Run and a Very Strange Third

The Storm never led by more than one, and that stopped being relevant fast. A 12-0 Fever run turned an 8-7 game into 20-7, eight different Indiana players scored in the opening quarter, and Clark led them with eight on the way to a 32-19 lead. The advantage reached 17 before the period was done.

Seattle clawed back within nine in the second, but Clark scored nine more with three assists, and Indiana took a 55-44 lead to the break with her already sitting on 17.

The third is where this got interesting, because the Storm actually did the hard part. They kept Clark off the scoreboard until a pair of free throws in the final second of the quarter. It did not matter even a little. Kelsey Mitchell scored nine, Sophie Cunningham added eight, and the Fever won the period 22-14 to go up 77-58. Seattle's best defensive stretch on the Clark front produced its lowest-scoring quarter of the day, which is the kind of math that ruins a game plan.

Myisha Hines-Allen's driving layup made it 89-69 with 3:55 left, a 20-point lead. Seattle scored the last nine points of the game, including long threes from Natisha Hiedeman from 29 and 27 feet, but that was decoration on a finished house. The Fever scored just 12 in the fourth, by far their lowest quarter, and the result was never in much doubt in front of 14,505.

The Paint Should Have Been Seattle's

Here is the obvious plan against a Fever team missing its All-Star center: go right at the rim. The opposite happened. Indiana won the paint 50-30, held Seattle's frontcourt players to 17 points and owned the glass 38-24. Without Boston, the Fever were the bigger team in every way that showed up on the stat sheet.

That is the swing that decided this, because Seattle did plenty of other things right. The Storm turned it over only eight times, piled up nine steals and eight blocks, and got 22 points off 20 Indiana giveaways. On most nights that formula wins you a game. But Seattle shot 35% and went 6-of-23 from three, and you cannot steal your way out of that.

Hines-Allen's line deserves some credit here: 3-of-3 from the field, eight points, six rebounds, four assists and a plus-16 in 27 minutes. Makayla Timpson added six points and six boards off the bench, and Monique Billings chipped in four points and five rebounds as a starter. Seattle's Stefanie Dolson scored six in 30 minutes, while Jordan Horston managed two on 1-of-5 shooting in 15. That is not a lot of resistance for a team that could have spent the whole afternoon attacking the one spot where Indiana was short-handed.

Clark Runs It, Everyone Else Eats

Clark's scoring came efficiently, 5-of-10 from the field, 2-of-4 from three and 9-of-9 at the line. The Fever say it was her 21st career double-double. The only smudge was five turnovers, and when you are running that much of an offense for that many possessions, some of those come with the job.

The more encouraging thing for Indiana is who ate alongside her. Mitchell scored 17 on 8-of-18 shooting and finished plus-21, the best mark in the game. Cunningham came off the bench for another 17, going 5-of-9 and 6-of-6 at the line in 25 minutes. Damiris Dantas played six minutes and somehow went plus-12.

Hiedeman led Seattle with 19 on 7-of-18 shooting. Flau'jae Johnson scored 14 on an ugly 3-of-14, but she went 8-of-9 at the line and blocked four shots, which at least gave her night some substance. Zia Cooke had 13 off the bench and Jade Melbourne scored 12, though Melbourne finished minus-16.

The Numbers That Mattered

• 22-of-22: Indiana at the free-throw line. Not one miss, with Clark and Cunningham accounting for 15 of the makes. Seattle also made 22, but it needed five more tries.
• 50-30: Fever in the paint, without their All-Star center.
• 38-24: Fever on the boards, with 31 of those on the defensive end.
• 22-14: Storm in points off turnovers, the one big category they won.
• 25-of-71: Seattle from the field, and the reason the previous bullet did not matter.

Back to Even

The Fever are 2-2 and 1-2 at home after dropping their first two in this building. Next is Portland on Wednesday, the third game of a four-game homestand, and Boston is listed as day to day.

Seattle falls to 1-3 and 1-2 on the road with a second straight loss. The Storm now head home for two games against Connecticut, starting Wednesday, and the Sun happen to be the only team they have beaten so far.

Ocean's Twelve

Clark now has her own Ocean's Twelve, and unlike the movie, nobody is going to spend the next two decades arguing about whether it was any good. The record is hers, it is growing, and she added to it on a night when her team's All-Star center did not play, and she only needed 24 minutes to do it. Seattle can feel good about those two free throws in the third. Nobody else will remember them.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Game details as reported by the Associated Press and the Indiana Fever.