UNCASVILLE, Conn. — Welcome to the W, Caitlin Clark.
In her WNBA debut Tuesday night, the best scorer in NCAA Division I history tallied an unorthodox double double — 20 points and 10 turnovers. On the one hand, she scored the second-most most points in a player’s first game with the Indiana Fever, and she tied the league mark with four threes in Game 1 of her career. And on the other hand, she committed 10 turnovers, the most ever in a player’s debut since the league began in 1997.
The early struggles to simply not cough up the ball isn’t what Clark and the Fever had in mind for their season opener, a 92-71 loss to the Connecticut Sun. As a team, the Fever committed 25 turnovers, and Sun made Indiana pay by scoring 29 points off of those miscues.
“It was physical,” said Clark after the game, learning quickly that the calls she might have been used to getting — or perhaps even getting away with -– at Iowa were not going to fly in the WNBA. “Just expecting physicality was the biggest thing. Like there’s no calls you’re gonna get. The [defense] is going to get those calls, it is what it is.”
Not only was the notoriously aggressive Connecticut Sun defense wearing Clark and the Fever down, they also drew…
