INDIANAPOLIS -- After a second straight game defined largely by non-basketball plays involving Caitlin Clark, Fever head coach Stephanie White hit her breaking point.
Stephanie White blasts officials after ‘cheap shots’ on Caitlin Clark
After a game where Caitlin Clark was involved in multiple incidents, Fever coach Stephanie White went off on the refs.
Wednesday’s 111-109 loss to the Mercury featured Clark leaving with an injury midway through the third quarter. Still plenty took place before then.
A pair of incidents in the second quarter saw Clark take a beating before eventually leaving the game with a back injury. White unloaded on the officials in her postgame press conference, calling the lack of calls “egregious” and “utterly disrespectful.”
“We have a generational talent and a WNBA superstar who had two cheap shots right there that weren’t called,” White said. “And I just say again, absolutely unacceptable.
“We spent all offseason looking at officiating. All offseason. And I still say the one thing that we keep asking for is consistency. She is not called the same way everybody else is called.”
First, Clark and Alyssa Thomas got tangled in the paint while battling for a loose ball in a sequence that saw Thomas push her fist into Clark’s neck, knee her in the stomach and then step over her. No foul was called and the play wasn’t reviewed.
One possession later, Clark was fouled on a 3-pointer, leading to an awkward landing. Clark, who has dealt with a back injury most of the season, was slow to get up and looked to be in discomfort. The officials reviewed the play, but not for a potential flagrant foul or a landing zone violation.
Instead, the review was for a potential hostile act by Clark for hitting her defender in the face.
She remained in the game and even started the second half. However, Clark left near the midway point of the quarter and was ruled out for the rest of the game due to the back injury. White did not have an update on Clark’s status after the game.
All of this came on the heels of these two teams having multiple scuffles in their meeting on Monday, resulting in a slew of technical fouls and plenty of bad blood.
“Number one, you got to call [the foul on Thomas],” White said. “It’s absolutely egregious and utterly disrespectful. And then No. 2, you’re coming in here aware of what happened two nights ago and that s--- still happens? Absolutely unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable.
“And the reckless closeout that they’ve actually reviewed, and the foot still comes down on top of the defender’s foot that wasn’t upgraded? Absolutely disrespectful.”
White is not new to calling out officials. Last season, she also called the officiating “disrespectful” following a controversial late play against the Liberty. Nearly a month later, following a game that saw multiple technicals, flagrants and ejections against the Sun, White again criticized the officials for not improving along with the rest of the league.
White has also defended her star player this season, but never as passionately as she did on Wednesday.
“Because they were so egregious,” White said of what was different this time. “I mean, the fist in the throat is crazy. It’s crazy. It’s dangerous. The landing spot, when you went to review it and she still comes down on top of another foot. Like, I don’t know, cause to me, that’s like a do-over on a test. How do you screw it up again?
”When you have these things continue to happen time and time and time and time and time again, eventually it gets frustrating, but I thought those were just more egregious.”
Frustration this season has piled up for the Fever, who fell to 10-7 with the loss. Indiana has struggled to string together wins and set the league record for most losses when scoring 100+ points in a season on Wednesday.
But, too often, the game itself is taking a back seat to moments like Wednesday’s. And for White, enough was enough.
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