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Have the Fever faded?

The Fever have surrendered home games against some of the best in the East, but have yet to win in Atlanta, Washington or Connecticut.

Tonight will be some answers.

In a rare day game, the kids of "Kids Day" are out in full force, filling the middle bowl, clapping their Bam Bams, cheering wildly with every cameo on the jumbotron and creating an unnnaturally loud and boisterous playoff atmosphere here at Conseco FieldHouse. 

And all that 20 minutes before the game tips off!

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They meet again, at All-State Arena, Chicago, Sunday 6PM EST

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Massey Predicts:  Fever 73.8, Sky 72.0, 57% Fever Win

Expect this game to be harder fought and more sophisticated than the prior two matchups, which saw the Fever sweep the Sky within the first week of the WNBA season. 

The Chicago Sky are coming off a scintillating wins over the top teams Washington Mystics and the Connecticut Sun.  Their first 4-0 win streak came from the emergent offensive play of Big Syl, but the latest streak is coming from the emergent offensive play of the Sky's backcourt, Epiphanny Prince and Jia Perkins.  Epiphanny Prince is playing confidently and taking over games at critical moments.  Jia Perkins is hitting her shots and scoring.  Despite their 5-8 record, a functional offense will make this team hard to stop, especially at All-state Arena. 

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After winning three consecutive home games this week against the Connecticut Sun, the Seattle Storm and the Atlanta Dream, the Indiana Fever remain stuck in third place in the Eastern Conference.  That's how tough the Eastern Conference is. 

Indiana proved that at this point in the season, they are as good as the top teams in the WNBA.  But they have yet to prove they are better.  They have a chance this week to prove it, if they can beat the Seattle Storm in their Key Arena "fortress" on Friday.  But the Storm should be far better prepared for Indiana's defense after losing 72-65 last Thursday. 

For the Fever, the game with the Dream was fairly representative of its three-game homestand.   All three games featured substantial double-digit Fever leads by mid-game, huge comebacks weathered by late game and all the right plays made down the stretch to win. 

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7pm EST  ||  WNBA PREVIEW  ||  WNBA LIVE ACCESS

Two great teams meet up tonight at Conseco Fieldhouse, 7 PM EST

No preview necessary.  Talk about it here. 

(Who's fouling who?  Lauren Jackson and Jessica Davenport battle under the basket. 

Photo courtesy of Josh Flynn.)

The Eastern Conference's domination over the West continues as Indiana Fever downed the WNBA-leading Seattle Storm, 72-65 on Thursday. The Storm are 7-0 against the anemic West, but are now only 2-2 against the East.

Seattle's only other loss came May 27th at Chicago, 84-75, their lowest point total before facing Indiana.

In a pregame interview, when asked whether the two teams represented a clash of styles, Fever forward Ebony Hoffman replied, "I think we both play tough. Seattle has this year changed its style. They are a lot tougher now. They've added LeCoe Willingham and a few other pieces they have. I think it's still a matter of wills. However a team gets the job done is how they get it done. If we can't get shots at the end, we rev up our defense. Some teams in the West, they rev up their offense."

Seattle imposed it's will early. But after scoring 27 points in the first quarter, the Storm scored only 38 in the next three quarters, including a 7 point 2nd quarter. The low final score suggests that the Fever won the battle of wills this time.

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7PM EST   ||   WNBA Preview   ||   WNBA Live Access

This is the gamethread, your appetizer before the game 7 of the NBA Finals.

Indianapolis -

My girlfriend spent one evening this week in a closet with her best friend, stockpiled with water, chocolate and a cellphone.   Some people are deathly afraid of storms. 

However, if you are Tammy Sutton-Brown, you go out after the storm and snap pics of rainbows for your tweeps.

For the past week, storms have rolled through Indiana, uncharacteristic of normally sunny mid-June days, complete with tornado warnings and other harbingers of tonight's game between the Seattle Storm (9-1) and the Indiana Fever (6-4).

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Here are videos of postgame interviews with the Indiana Fever stars of Sunday's home win over the Connecticut Sun, starting with Fever coach Lin Dunn's postgame presser.

Overall, the attendance and crowd excitement for this game was pretty raucous.

The Sun were down 20 points before coming back in the 3rd and 4th quarter to tie the game at 60-all with seven minutes to go.

100613 Lin Dunn Postgame Presser.AVI (via samjames009)

• Better defensive intensity this game than on Friday, shutting down Tina Charles and Renee Montgomery (Tully Bevilaqua deserves credit for blanketing Montgomery).
  
• Catchings was incredible in the clutch. (No kidding, watch the last seven minutes of this game to see why)
  
• The team needs to stop complaining about calls.  (Yes, that means you, Katie!)
• The team still is needs practice time to work out offensive kinks.  (The whole team has only practiced once together with Briann January and Shavonte Zellous)
• Big week this week at home: Seattle and Atlanta. (Fans, these are going to be great, GREAT games!)

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The Connecticut Sun's league-leading homecourt advantage is probably a statistical artifact derived from the simpler fact that the Sun have won all of their home games, but also have lost all of their road games.

The weekend home-and-home series between the Sun and the Indiana Fever further reinforced that wedge.  The Sun won Friday's game at the Mohegan Sun 86-77, but lost Sunday's game at Conseco Fieldhouse, 77-67.   In both games, the home team got an early lead, the away team tied the game in the 4th quarter and the home team got the stops and the scores to win the game.

Sun coach Mike Thibault talked about the home-and-home series. "The two teams are kind of eying each other.  As we go down the road, you could end up playing each other in the playoffs.  There's enough of a rivalry between them.  Knowing that it was like a mini-playoff series, I was disappointed at the start."

"We understand we have to become a tougher team on the road." said Sun guard Kara Lawson.  "We've got to play LA and then we've got to play Phoenix next week.  We've not won a road game a month into the season. We have to focus on that.  We've got to be tougher.  We got to be better defensively in the first halves. In all of our road games we fell behind.  We played better second halves, but have not been able to get over the hump."

Thibault echoed those sentiments, saying, "My biggest concern is, aside from the series part of it, is that I thought we would have had a better start to the game tonight than we did.  Obviously we jumped them a little bit early at our place and I knew they would be more aggressive defensively coming into tonight."

"I felt now that we're whatever number of games we are into the season, I thought we would handle it better.  And we didn't.  It's one thing to miss shots, but to not rebound the ball well enough and to have, I'll say, sloppy turnovers, not even them making a great play.  That disappointed me," continued Thibault.

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FRIDAY,  Sun 86, Fever 77:    WNBA Preview  ||  Fever Preview || AP Recap of Game 1

SUNDAY,  6.00PM EST:   WNBA Preview  ||  Fever Preview  ||  WNBA Access

Recently, the Seattle Storm has been credited with having a fortress.  This season, however, the Connecticut Sun, undefeated at home, have the greatest homecourt advantage.  Massey Ratings estimates the Sun's HA to be worth 7.71 points per game.  Seattle comes in third with 4.78 points per game. 

Why the Sun have such huge homecourt advantage is an unanswered question, but they held serve despite being down five points going into the fourth quarter and the game slipping away from a 72-72 tie with 180 seconds left.  The win over the Fever (5-4) on Friday put the Connecticut Sun (6-2) in first place in the Eastern Conference.

Today, the two teams rematch, this time on the Indiana Fever homecourt.

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FRIDAY,  7.30PM EST:    WNBA Preview  ||   WNBA Live Access  ||  Fever Preview

SUNDAY,  6.00PM EST:   WNBA Preview || WNBA Access || AP Recap of Gm 1

This is the series preview and the game thread for Friday and Sunday's games.  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  We're green like that.

There's ten teams on deck tonight.  But fortunately we have WNBA Live Access to stagger the games for us.

The WNBA schedulers have received some criticism lately about games conflicting with the NBA Finals.  The questions echo from Watergate: "What did the WNBA schedulers know about the NBA Finals, and when did they know it?" 

We know the schedulers must navigate the inscrutable forces of international league play and the humiliation of higher priority arena uses (boy band Hanson is in town?), all while cutting travel costs to the bare bones.  Who knows what complex alchemy -- a blood pact between dismal economics and wonky computer-aided rocket science -- those schedulers embarked upon to come up with the WNBA 2010 season schedule.

The butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo, and we have the biggest, nastiest oil disaster in the gulf.  Can you really say that by moving those few conflicting WNBA games a day or two off their dates wouldn't have thrown the whole WNBA schedule off?  Can you promise that moving those few games would not cause the looming world-ending disaster of 2012?

I thought not, mundane spectator. 

Despite the flaws in the WNBA schedule, we do have some things to be thankful for.  In particular, God bless the WNBA schedulers for these home-and-home series!

There's an unmatched level of intensity and completeness about them.  Taking a page from baseball, it's a mini-playoff series with the layered complexity of game-to-game adjustment.   At the end of the series, we will have a clear picture of which team is clearly better, or if the teams are relatively even.  In a one-off game, we might not if a home win was simply home court advantage. 

Here are two teams playing great basketball featuring stellar league-leading defenses and modest offenses, stacked with massive depth ready to grind it out this weekend.   This battle will not be a contrast in styles, but a purifiction and a refinement of East Coast basketball.   Massey Ratings gives Connecticut the edge in the series, Hollinger's power rankings put Indiana slightly on top. 

This is a big step up in competition for both teams.  Both teams recently beat the New York Liberty and both blew out the Silver Stars without Becky Hammon. They now each face a formidable and resourceful team at the top of the WNBA.

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Anyone looking at today's standings would marvel at the notion of "WNBA Parity". Following Sunday's 89-51 humiliating destruction of the Minnesota Lynx after Thursday's 79-57 thrashing of the Silver Stars by the Indiana Fever, I started digging into the Myth and the Dogma of WNBA Parity.

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One week ago, Indianapolis celebrated 99th year of the Indy 500.  The early season of the WNBA has been a lot like the Indy 500 in that most teams have been trying to tune-up their cars while racing them at 250 miles per hour. 

The Indiana Fever "car" had initially stalled at the green light (thank you, Istanbul), but has since torn through the field, even as the Coach Lin Dunn continues to tinker on the Fever's engine.

After starting 0-2 in a pair of opening weekend games against the Washington Mystics and the  Atlanta Dream, the Fever have won 5 of 6. The Fever have just finished three games in four days going 3-0, with two of them blowouts. On Thursday, the Fever led San Antonio by as much as 30, winning 79-57. Yesterday, the Fever shattered the well-advertised myth of WNBA parity with a 38 point (89-51) win over Minnesota Lynx on their homecourt. 

With approximately a quarter of the season's games played (8 of 34), the Indiana Fever's  preseason is officially over.

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New York Liberty (2-3) at Indiana Fever (3-3)

Saturday, June 5, 2010, 7PM EST

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Like engineering disasters, there's never one clear reason for the Indiana Fever's 79-57 blowout of the San Antonio Silver Stars. 

In fact, the conflagration of contributing factors make one's first impulse to condemn the game as an aberration, bury the tape and move on. 

However, if we get our hands dirty a little and mess around in the wreckage of yesterday's game, we may find a few more clues.  Clues not to the game that was, but to the games that will be.

WNBA / AP Recap  ||  Indy Star Recap  ||  SA Express Recap

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Isn't the WNBA about adjustments? 

After debuting the slick smaller lineup with Shay Murphy in for Ebony Hoffman last game, the Indiana Fever are going with their vintage lineup. 

Meanwhile the Silver Stars are not only going with a guets coaching staff, but also word here is the best PG of 2009 will be out with a strained quadracep! 

It's wouldn't be unusual to me if the Silver Stars came out and played great short-handed, but the Fever have equally strong incentives to want to win this game.

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Here's four photos by Max Simbron of a veteran Coach Lin Dunn talking to her rookie point guard Briann January in the heat of the 2009 WNBA Finals...

We may never know what they were actually discussing and I'm sure it involved some "euphemisms" but under all that verbage, I think this is really what was being communicated.

January is out "for a few games" with a sprained MCL. You think this Indiana Fever team (now 2-3) isn't missing her 25mpg? I am. I hope she gets well soon.

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The Wicked Witches of the WNBA

What a difference an offseason makes.

For years, the Detriot Shock were the Indiana Fever's unconquerable nemesis.  Until last year, long time Fever players like Tamika Catchings and Ebony Hoffman simply could not get past Detriot. 

"There's not really a key to what it is," Catchings said of the Fever's dominance over Chicago. "I believe our rivalry for them [the Sky] is probably like our rivalry with [the Shock]."

The Wicked Witches of the East's reign of terror, anchored by Bad Boy Bill Laimbeer's brutal will, lasted from 2003 to 2008, when they went to the finals four times and won three titles.  Last year of course, the House of Fever dropped like an anvil out of the sky and squashed the Wicked Witches of the East, partially diminished under Rick Mahorn's rule.  The Fever put enough pieces in place to finally triumph in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Shock.  It wasn't a moment too soon, because the Detroit Shock, like the witch doused with water, evaporated after the loss and will never be seen again. 

The Tulsa Shock in the West, perhaps the lesser sister of the Detroit Shock of the East, carries on, but the team (now 1-3) is little like its predecessor.  The team in Tulsa has received a warm early welcome from fans, but players have evacuated since Detriot orphaned the franchise.   Says Kevin Messenger,

No longer are Bill Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn leading the cast of veterans led by Katie Smith, Deanna Nolan and Cheryl Ford. Smith has gone to Washington, Nolan is taking a year off and Ford remains sidelined with bad knees. That leaves Plenette Pierson, Kara Braxton and Shavonte Zellous as top guns from last year’s squad which fell to Indiana in the Eastern Conference Finals.

What a world, what a world!

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News Release

The Indiana Fever has acquired second-year guard Shavonte Zellous from the Tulsa Shock, in exchange for a 2011 second-round draft pick, it has been announced by Chief Operating Officer and General Manager Kelly Krauskopf. To accommodate the move on the Fever roster, Indiana has waived Allie Quigley.

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I like to give the games at least a day to sink in and let the collective internet response bubble up.

Is Katie Douglas' poor shooting a serious concern?  Can we expect more scintillating play from Shay Murphy?   Can Coach Steven Key get more out of Shameka Christon?  Should WNBA referees be calling more fouls on physical play inside the paint?

All this and more in the Sky/Fever addition of "Around the Web".

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The Sky are falling

The Sky / Fever Winless Rivarly Weekend ends with a clear winner, and unfortuntely, a very clear loser. With the back-to-back wins, the Fever inch up to 2-2 respectability, the Chicago Sky are at an awful 0-4, with hard road schedule going forward, facing the Seattle Storm, the Minnesota Lynx and the Atlanta Dream.

The Sky have some good pieces put around Olympian Sylvia Fowles. Dominique Canty showed off a few powerful drives and was able to finish. It's unclear why Shameka Christon played so little in Sunday's game (12:38 minutes, lingering neck injury?), she did a reasonable job containing Tameka Catchings when assigned to her and also contributed a few 3s that helped the Sky's best run of game. During that stretch, the Sky were 13-0 in 4 minutes against the Fever's best players.

Amid the team's franchise best home game attendance yet, you'd like them to get home and get some wins in front of their fans. Welcome to the brutality of the WNBA schedule matched with very competitive opponents.

Post-game Audio, Interviews and Links to be posted shortly.

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