On the latest episode of Locked On Women’s Basketball, host Missy Heidrick is joined by The Next’s Indiana Fever beat writer Tony East to assess the team’s current situation. Do the Fever have a decent shot at making the playoffs? What has to go right for this team to see the postseason? Heidrick and East answer those questions. Plus, The Next’s Terry Horstman adds a Minnesota Lynx podcast to the daily mix.
Heidrick opens the show by asking East to, simply, give fans a sense of where things stand for the Indiana Fever. “The Fever lost to the Lynx twice. They’re super banged up,” East says, referring to the number of injuries that have plagued the team this season. “I don’t think the Fever will beat themselves up for these losses, but… these upcoming seven days will be so epic in the race to make the playoffs because the Fever play, this week, Seattle on Tuesday, LA on Friday and Golden State on Sunday.” As East explains, those are all teams aggressively vying for a playoff spot.
Later on, Heidrick asks East to give a run down of where he personally thinks the Fever are at. “There are a lot of things they’re trying to figure out,” East says. “Is there enough left in the tank for the team to make that push? They’re playing okay. They need to play better.” At this point in the season, as East explains, every game is so important.
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Howard Megdal’s newest book is here! “Becoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar” captures both the historic nature of Clark’s rise and the critical context over the previous century that helped make it possible, including interviews with Clark, Lisa Bluder (who also wrote the foreword), C. Vivian Stringer, Jan Jensen, Molly Kazmer and many others.
Heidrick closes the show by asking East to predict what might happen for the Fever in their remaining seven games. After East runs through the upcoming schedule and surmises which games the team could win, he circles back to his core message, which is that the Fever need to win the winnable games. Per East, “they need to put themselves in a position where they don’t need help from someone else losing a game that they don’t need to lose.”
Make sure to subscribe to the Locked On Women’s Basketball podcast to keep learning about the WNBA, women’s college basketball, basketball history and much more! And keep scrolling for an inside look at the Minnesota Lynx from The Next’s Lynx beat reporter, Terry Horstman.