Sparks vs. Fever: Nneka Ogwumike's 24 Spoils Caitlin Clark's Return as L.A. Snaps Skid, 106-92

Everybody came to Crypto.com Arena on Wednesday night to see one comeback. Caitlin Clark was back in the Indiana lineup after missing two games with a back injury, and for about eight minutes, the Fever looked every bit the part, up 25-15 on a Sparks team that hadn't won since June 21. Then Los Angeles decided to stage a comeback of its own.

Nneka Ogwumike's line of 24 points, eight boards and five assists led the way, Rae Burrell scored 22, Dearica Hamby added 21, and the Sparks topped the Indiana Fever 106-92 in front of 12,939 to snap a three-game losing streak. Clark finished with nine points in 16 minutes. Eleven days after a 111-87 beating in Indianapolis, the Sparks got to enjoy a very different kind of night.

Ten Down, Then Gone

Indiana's start was exactly what you'd draw up. Kelsey Mitchell scored early and often, Tyasha Harris and Makayla Timpson got loose, and Clark's bucket made it 25-15 with two minutes left in the first. Los Angeles closed the quarter with six straight, then pushed that to eight early in the second to make it 25-23. Suddenly the 10-point cushion was gone, and the game's whole mood changed.

The real swing came next. Indiana led 34-28 with under six minutes to go in the half when Ogwumike took over. She scored eight points in a row, finishing the stretch with a three for a 36-34 lead, and Hamby and Burrell added buckets to complete a 12-0 run that made it 40-34. A Lexie Hull three kept the Fever in touch, but the Sparks went to the break up 48-41 and had a 27-16 quarter in their pocket.

The Third-Quarter Swing

It tilted for good right after halftime. Clark scored to open the half, cutting it to five, and for a moment it looked like Indiana might reassert itself. Instead, Hamby scored, Erica Wheeler hit a three, and Ariel Atkins picked a pocket and raced the other way for a layup that made it 55-43 with 8:17 left in the third.

Mitchell did everything she could to keep this from getting out of hand. She hit four threes in the quarter, three of them in a span of less than three minutes, and the Fever put up 30 points in the period. It didn't matter. Los Angeles answered nearly every one of them, scoring 34 in the quarter, and Burrell had 10 of those, the last three with four seconds left for an 82-71 lead.

Wheeler's three-point play at 6:50 of the fourth made it 91-77, and the rest of the game was a procession. The Fever got within 10 once, at 91-81, and Ogwumike's pull-up jumpers at 3:41 and 1:39 squashed anything that looked like a rally.

Spoiling the Party

Ogwumike went 9 of 19, hit 2 of 4 threes and made all four of her free throws. Burrell was the most efficient of the trio at 9 of 15 with four assists. Hamby was a menace, adding nine rebounds, four steals and a game-best plus-17. Wheeler and Atkins each scored 12, with Wheeler adding six assists, as five Sparks starters reached double figures. Kiana Williams gave them a lift off the bench with five points, four assists and a plus-13 in 15 minutes, and Jihyun Park had three steals and four rebounds in just 10. They did all of it with Cameron Brink (left ankle) and Kelsey Plum (lower left leg) out.

For Indiana, Mitchell's 29 points came on 9-of-18 shooting with five threes, and the team says it was her 36th straight double-digit game, leaving her one short of the franchise record held by Tamika Catchings. Hull scored 14, Damiris Dantas had a season-high 12 and Harris added 10. Monique Billings grabbed 12 rebounds in only 18 minutes, five on the offensive end.

Clark's return was a rough one on the stat sheet: 4 of 12 shooting, 1 of 6 from three, four rebounds, three assists, four turnovers and a minus-16. The Fever were also without Aliyah Boston, who sat out with a right leg injury. According to the team, it was just the second game she's missed in her entire WNBA career.

Twenty-Seven to Four

• 27-4: Fast-break points. Los Angeles ran on every miss and every turnover, and Indiana couldn't get back.
• 60-38: Points in the paint, with Boston's absence glaring.
• 22-8: The Sparks' edge in points off turnovers, on 17 Indiana giveaways.
• 9 of 20 vs. 11 of 34: Three-point shooting. The Fever made two more threes and needed 14 more attempts to do it.
• 25-18: Assists, a sign of how easy Los Angeles' offense looked after the first quarter.

Back in the Win Column

Los Angeles improves to 9-11 and 4-7 at home, with Chicago coming to town on Friday. It's the first Sparks win since that one-point thriller against New York on June 21, and it comes after a brutal stretch that included losses of 28, 24 and 18 points.

Indiana falls to 12-9 and 4-5 on the road, ending a two-game win streak. The Fever still took the season series with L.A. 2-1, but there's no time to think about that. They play again Thursday night in Phoenix on the second leg of a back-to-back.

The Ensemble Steals the Movie

There's an old Hollywood rule that the star gets the poster and the ensemble steals the picture, and it's fitting that it played out in Los Angeles. Clark's return was the headline, and it'll still be the headline in plenty of places. But the actual story was a Sparks team, short two of its own key players, that got buried early, shrugged it off and then outran one of the league's best offenses. Sixty points in the paint and 27 on the break isn't a fluke. That's a team that remembered how to enjoy itself, at the exact moment everyone in the building was looking at somebody else.

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