UNCASVILLE, Conn. — Indiana head coach Christie Sides pauses every time she looks at the chart listing the top four seeds and the playoff experience of their active rosters.
Near the top are the No. 3 seed Connecticut Sun, the team for which she has been tasked with game planning. Their combined 222 postseason games are the second-most, behind the two-time reigning champion Las Vegas Aces. The least experienced of the top four are the Minnesota Lynx, with 130 and led by a four-time WNBA champion head coach.
In small print at the bottom it reads Fever: 19 games.
“I didn’t even know we had 19,” Fever general manager Lin Dunn said before the team practiced at Mohegan Sun Arena on Tuesday ahead of Game 2.
The Fever are the least experienced playoff team on the field, and that showed in their Game 1 loss. They were undisciplined and panicked at crucial moments, causing a two-possession deficit to turn into a blowout. Connecticut was more physical, sharper and focused on the game plan.
“We were playing a veteran team in their home stadium that had a ton of playoff experience, and we didn’t,” Dunn said. “We have some experience now and we’ll see how we respond to it. There’s no way to talk about what it’s like. You just have to live it.”
Sides and her coaching staff will make their changes — improving their physicality and bolstering their transition defense — but they won’t be able to make up for that experience gap overnight. That’s why the two-year head coach is making sure to enjoy the moment and keep perspective as she continues to compete to force a third game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on Friday night.
“These guys are learning how to handle it and this is going to be great for the future, getting this experience,” Sides said Tuesday before practice. Before the first game, he didn’t hesitate to say he’ll be talking about championships in three to five years, as he first said last summer.
Four of the Fever’s five starters have less than three years of WNBA experience. All of them made deep March Madness in college, but entered the first-round series without any combined WNBA playoff experience. That includes veteran point guard Kelsey Mitchell, who is a seven-year veteran.
Caitlin Clark, who is coming off two straight Final Fours, said Tuesday that the intensity, pressure and win-or-go-home situation are similar to college, but still different as a rookie at the professional level.
“It’s a learning process for me, too,” Clark said. “Obviously, this is my first playoff. A lot of us are in our first playoff on this team. We’re all going through this at the same time and learning. You don’t always know what to expect, because a lot of us have never been here.”
Every other team has at least one veteran (and usually several) who has made the Finals or won championships. DeWanna Bonner, who guarded Clark for the first time in Game 1, won two titles in Phoenix. The Mercury won it all in her rookie year in 2009, but she came off the bench. Bonner, 37, will play in her 82nd playoff game Wednesday in her 62nd playoff start. Alyssa Thomas will play in her 42nd playoff game, Brionna Jones her 32nd and DiJonai Carrington her 22nd.
“(It’s about) knowing what to expect from the environment (and) understanding that the margin for error is a lot smaller,” Sun head coach Stephanie White said before coaching her 20th playoff game, including 11 during the Fever’s run to the Finals in 2015.
Thomas said she remembered making her first playoff in 2017 as part of a young, confident Sun group when it was single-elimination. She didn’t necessarily understand what it took to come ready to play and experience the ups and downs of a playoff environment. No one can explain it, she said. It’s a higher level of competition that you have to experience to understand. The more experienced Mercury eliminated them two years in a row despite the Sun being the higher seed.
“We hadn’t been there and they had been,” Thomas said. “It was noticeable, but we also remember that feeling and we keep moving forward.”
Dunn’s three-year plan for the Fever ended with “making the playoffs,” and they’ve done so with aplomb. The Fever clinched the No. 6 seed weeks before the season ended to make their first postseason berth since 2016 in a league that welcomes 75% of its teams to the party. The head coach of the Fever’s 2012 championship team didn’t put a timeline on the next step of winning the title, but indicated the team would be active in free agency again to fill some of the void.
“(The Sun) has shown his championship experience and that carries over to his teammates. It’s contagious,” Dunn said. “And so we need to continue down that path to have more people with that kind of experience.”
They can only go with what they have now. The Fever are still short of experience in the playoffs, but that number will go from 19 to 31 games.
“We can learn from that in a way,” Lexie Hull said. “That every possession means something, and all five of us on the court have to be really focused, competing and diving for those loose balls. It means a lot, especially tomorrow (in Game 2).”