Valkyries vs. Fever: Kaitlyn Chen Goes 5-for-5 as Golden State Wins Franchise-Record Eighth Straight

Kaitlyn Chen played 10 minutes on Wednesday night in Indianapolis. She scored 14 points in them. She took five shots from the field and made all five, went 4-of-5 at the line, and according to her team did every bit of that inside a five-minute window in the second half. If you went to the concession stand at the wrong time, you missed the whole performance.

It was also about the most fitting way possible for this team to make franchise history. Golden State took down the Indiana Fever 88-75 in front of 17,014 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse for an eighth straight victory, a record for the second-year franchise, and the Valkyries closed their road trip 5-0.

Eight Up Front, Then a Wobble

Golden State came out and scored the game's first eight points, with Gabby Williams getting things started and Cecilia Zandalasini dropping in a pair of 3s. Indiana clawed back with an 8-0 run of its own to make it 12-10, and the Valkyries carried a 20-18 lead out of the first. A 20-12 second quarter pushed it to 40-30 at the half, and everything looked under control.

Then the Fever came out of the locker room looking like the team that had just dropped 109 on Las Vegas. A 9-0 run trimmed a 42-30 deficit to 42-39, and Sophie Cunningham's free throws eventually gave Indiana its first lead of the night. It had about the shelf life of a TikTok trend. Indiana's largest lead all game was one point.

Chen's Five Minutes

That's when Golden State went to its bench and found the hottest hand in the building. Chen scored 12 of her 14 in the third, which works out to two-thirds of Golden State's 18 points in the quarter. She converted layups on three straight trips and capped it with an and-one right before the buzzer. The Valkyries ran off 11 straight points across the quarter break, flipping a 52-51 game into 63-51 with 9:16 left, and Kayla Thornton's 3 made it 69-56 soon after.

Indiana still had one more run in it. Caitlin Clark saw a basket wiped out by a shot-clock violation, and Tiffany Hayes made Indiana pay with an and-one that stretched it to 80-65 with 3:30 left. That looked like the ballgame. Kelsey Mitchell disagreed, drilling a 26-foot step-back and a 27-footer around an Aliyah Boston layup to make it 80-73 with 1:40 to go. But the Fever coughed it up on their next trip, Hayes hit two at the line, and Golden State closed by going 8-of-8 at the stripe over the final 66 seconds.

A Group Project Where Everyone Did the Reading

Eight straight wins isn't a one-woman operation, and this box score proves it. Six Valkyries scored in double figures, and half of them came off the bench. Williams, back after a week out with a back contusion, led the way with 16 points and three steals, though she also had five turnovers. Hayes scored 13 on 3-of-4 shooting and a perfect 7-of-7 at the line. Janelle Salaun added 12 on 4-of-7. Thornton had 11 points and eight rebounds and finished plus-21, the best mark in the game. Zandalasini's early 3s were the start of her 10. Even the quiet lines helped: Veronica Burton scored just four but had five rebounds, four assists and three steals, and Kiah Stokes added seven rebounds and two blocks to her four points.

Indiana got 20 from Mitchell on 7-of-16 shooting, and Boston added 15 points and seven rebounds. Sophie Cunningham scored 10 off the bench with four steals. Clark's line is the one everyone will circle: 13 points on 4-of-14 shooting, 1-of-8 from deep, with six assists and four turnovers in 26 minutes. Indiana actually scored 45 points after halftime, but it spent all of them chasing.

Bench Math

Run the turning point back and the answer is the same every time. Indiana did what it needed to do to erase a 12-point deficit in the third quarter, and Golden State answered with players who hadn't started. The Valkyries' reserves outscored Indiana's 43-21, a 22-point gap in a 13-point game. Chen's 14, Hayes's 13 and Salaun's 12 add up to 39 by themselves, nearly double what Indiana's whole bench managed.

That's the thing about this streak. Depth doesn't show up on a highlight reel until a reserve goes on a heater in somebody else's arena, and then it's the only thing anybody's talking about. Golden State also won the line, going 20-of-23 to Indiana's 12-of-16, and shot 52 percent to the Fever's 40.

Stats That Matter

• 43-21: Bench scoring in Golden State's favor.
• 5-for-5: Chen from the field, in just 10 minutes.
• 20-of-23: The Valkyries at the free-throw line, including those 8-of-8 down the stretch.
• 22-16: Points off turnovers, Golden State's way.
• 1-of-8: Clark from 3-point range.

What It Means

Golden State is 18-7 overall and 8-4 on the road, with five straight road wins inside an eight-game run that the team calls the longest active streak in the WNBA. Only Minnesota, at 19-6, has a better record tonight. The Valkyries now head home to host Washington on Saturday.

Indiana falls to 14-10 and 8-5 at home, and a two-game winning streak is over. Golden State now leads the season series 2-1 after the teams split in May. The Fever stay in Indianapolis to host Seattle on Friday.

Somebody Check the Sliders

There's a setting in 2K where you can push the sliders until your backup never misses, and usually you only touch it after a rough week at work. Chen's Wednesday looked a lot like that: 10 minutes, 14 points, no missed field goals and one franchise record in the books. Golden State has now found eight straight ways to win, and this time the answer was a reserve who only needed 10 minutes. Good luck game-planning for that.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Game notes from the Golden State Valkyries. Context as reported by the Associated Press.