INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana Fever have won three straight games to keep up in a tight seeding race, ending with a 20-point win over the Connecticut Sun last weekend.
Then, like every team, they stopped dead in their tracks. The WNBA is halting thanks to the FIBA Women’s World Cup, creating a break in the action from August 31 until September 16. For the Fever, the pause is from August 28 to September 18 due to their schedule.
Stars Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston, as well as head coach Stephanie White (assistant), aren’t getting much of a break as they suit up for Team USA in the World Cup. But the rest of the coaching staff, plus the other 12 players on the roster, are resetting. It’s a gap in the schedule the team must take advantage of.
Fortunately for the Fever, they won their final game before this multi-week pause. That lifted spirits during the time off. “We want to spend the next couple of weeks in a good mood,” forward Lexie Hull said before the aforementioned game against Connecticut. She thought a victory in that game would keep the coaching staff in high spirits and make the FIBA break practices better as a result.
Indiana did win. But before they hit the court for any practice time during the mid-season interruption, the non-Clark and Boston players will get some time away to reboot.
Myisha Hines-Allen, who has been through several World Cup and Olympic breaks, shared that a lot of Fever players will go home for a short time during the break. Moments with family can be rejuvenating and hard to come by during the season. Yet it’s just a brief cleanse before it’s time to get back to work.
“I think we’re pros. First and foremost, I’ll speak for myself, I’m taking a break for a second. Then just get back into the gym,” Hines-Allen said of the team getting basketball-related work done while separated for a beat. The veteran forward noted that every player has their own gym and trainers they can rely on while at home (or wherever they happen to be), so staying in shape will be feasible.
Hines-Allen also detailed that every player will be sent things to accomplish in terms of workouts and individual training. That’s a crucial goal for Indiana Fever staff while the team is apart with no oversight: Create some structure.
“We’ve got to create structure. I think that’s the most important thing. You create the structure for them,” White explained. “Prioritize what you can do. Rest that first week, then prioritize what you can do in the next 10 days before we play.
“Working on us, player development. Things we want to add, things we want to get better in,” she added of what those priorities will look like. White herself is with Clark and Boston, so it will be up to her assistants to maintain order with the stateside members of the roster.
While some players will go visit family or spend time in their offseason home, that isn’t true of everyone. And for some, Indianapolis is home. That group will be in-market together and able to train with each other — getting some live action basketball in.
Hull, who has been with the Fever since the 2022 WNBA Draft, is among that group. Her rookie season that year was condensed so the league could finish games before the World Cup even started, but in 2024 she battled through an Olympic break.
In that season, the Fever won seven of their next eight games once the Olympics concluded. Indiana’s only absent player at the time was Kristy Wallace (Australia), but they handled the time off well and surged into the postseason as a result.
Hull hopes this year’s group can hit the ground running in a similar manner post World Cup. “It’s a chance to work on things. Work on things individually, but also collectively,” she said. “We’ll have most of our team here outside of [Boston] and [Clark] and [White]. It’s a chance for us to get better.”
Veteran guard Tyasha Harris also has experience with these breaks, but she was muted about her individual strategy for the time off. “I can’t tell you my plans. You will see,” she said.
Harris did explain how a team, and its players, can get the most out of the break. “You’ve got to take the time that you get honestly. The season comes fast,” she said. Many Indiana Fever players shared the importance of the mental break they got during the 2024 Olympic break, and they used that pause to find some consistency. “If we get a [bit of] time, I’m going to take that for sure,” Harris added.
The Fever have four games left in the regular season. They are in a close race for homecourt advantage to start the postseason, and three of their final four games are against other teams in the postseason mix (Washington once, Minnesota twice). Critically, those teams have a record better than .500, meaning they are important battles as the Fever chase a tiebreaker advantage over teams like Atlanta and New York — record against teams over .500 is the deciding factor in those tiebreakers.
Three victories for Indiana will secure them a top-five seed. They don’t control their own destiny for homecourt advantage and will need some losses from Atlanta, Golden State, or Las Vegas to earn that.
In order to play well and win games after the World Cup break, the Fever will need to take advantage of the time off. As second-year forward Makayla Timpson put it, they need to act like pros.
“Just staying disciplined to who we are. I know all the time we [say]. ‘we’re a pro, so act like a pro.’ Don’t just sit around at the house,” Timpson said. She’s going through her first international break as a WNBA player. “Still take a little bit of rest, but also be disciplined.”
Timpson said she will do individual workouts and, like Hines-Allen, said that she will be given a plan for training and conditioning. A key thing Timpson noted? That she and her teammates need to stay sharp on the playbook so they remember sets upon return.
That return comes in just under two weeks. For the Fever’s stretch run and postseason to be a success, they need their pre-return work during the World Cup break to be productive.
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