It was just another day at the office for Rookie of the Year front runner Caitlin Clark. Witnessing her make history is starting to become routine.
The 2024 WNBA No. 1 overall pick out of Iowa, put together her 21st game of the season with at least 15 points and five assists in the Indiana Fever’s 84-79 win over the Atlanta Dream on Monday night, the most by any player in WNBA history.
Clark filled up the stat sheet, scoring 19 points and seven dimes, along with seven rebounds, two steals and a block. She also knocked down four of nine three-pointers to bring her season total to 85, tying the rookie record set by the Dream’s Rhyne Howard in 2022.
17,608 fans were packed like sardines in to the Atlanta Hawks’ State Farm Arena as the Dream set a record for the highest attendance for a WNBA game in Georgia. This was the fifth time this season that a team’s attendance record has been shattered when the rock stars known as the Fever come to town.
In her remarks postgame about the crowd, Clark spoke after the game about the growth of women’s basketball over the course of the year.
“I feel like I’m just a kid that plays basketball and has a lot of fun,” she said. “And for me, like, coming into these arenas and these environments, I look around and it’s incredible. It really is.
“I don’t show up and expect these crowds. Sure, maybe you’ve gotten a little bit used to it, but for me, that’s not anything that ever gets old. It really is something that’s really cool, especially as a young girl who grew up going to games. As a young girl, I would have came to a game in a building like this and seen this type of crowd, I think I would have been kind of in heaven.
Embed from Getty Images“It gives me a lot of joy to see the impact that I’ve been able to have, my teammates have been able to have, women’s basketball players all across the country have been able to have,” she added.
Indiana moves to 14-16 with the victory, which is good for seventh place in the standings, meaning the team has already secured its highest regular season win total since 2016. Kelsey Mitchell racked up a season-high 29 points to lead the team in scoring, her fourth straight game with at least 20 points for the Fever.
According to ESPN Stats & Information, Mitchell has 105 points combined over Indiana’s past four games, equaling the record she set last year for most points in a four-game span in Fever history.
2023 WNBA Rookie of the Year Aliyah Boston recorded a double-double with 14 points and 11 boards while some sharp perimeter shooting from Damiris Dantas saw her put up 11 points on 80% shooting in under 10 minutes of action against her former team.
Indiana opened up the game with an 11-3 run and did not surrender the lead once, building up an 18-point advantage with around seven minutes to go in the third quarter. The Dream fought back and refused to lay down putting pressure on the Fever later in the period and outscored their opponents by six in the final frame, but the deficit proved too much to overcome.
Royalty was in the building. At halftime, the gold medal team from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics was honored.
