INDIANAPOLIS — After two regular-season games, the promise the Indiana Fever had shown during an unbeaten preseason had nearly evaporated.
The Fever opened the season with back-to-back losses, including a 96-74 blowout in its home opener against Minnesota.
It hasn’t lost since. The Fever enter tonight’s home game against Atlanta on a 10-game winning streak, a franchise record and tied for seventh-best in WNBA history.
The honors have rolled in. Lin Dunn has been named coach for the Eastern Conference all-star team, and Tamika Catchings and Katie Douglas have been voted all-star starters. Catchings and center Tammy Sutton-Brown have been named Eastern Conference players of the week this season.
The players say improved team chemistry has been the biggest difference between this season and last year’s 17-17 campaign.
“We don’t have attitudes,” Catchings said. “We don’t have people who are complaining about this, complaining about that. Everybody just wants to win.”
Last season, Catchings missed the preseason and the first eight games of the regular season with a torn right Achilles tendon, and many of her teammates weren’t on the court together until the season opener because they arrived late after playing in foreign leagues. Catchings’ injury meant Douglas, a new acquisition from Connecticut, was rushed into a role as a primary scorer with no experience with her new teammates. All this happened as the team was adjusting to a new coach.
This season, Dunn entered training camp with a full roster and no major injuries.
Catchings, the leading vote-getter for the all-star team, has led the team in scoring just once during the streak. The veteran has averaged 16.5 points in her career, but that is down to 13.7 this season.
She doesn’t care.
“I want to do whatever I can to help this team win,” she said. “If it’s taking a back seat and not shooting the ball 15, 16 times like I’ve had to in the past … I don’t have to do that anymore.”
That’s because Douglas, Sutton-Brown and Ebony Hoffman average in double figures, and 36-year-old point guard Tully Bevilaqua is scoring at the highest rate of her career.
Bevilaqua has been key. She lost her starting job to rookie Briann January during the preseason, but the team is 10-0 since she regained her spot. Primarily a pass-first, defensive point guard, she’s averaging a career-high 7.3 points per game.
“That’s been a mental game for many years, that you should look for Catch, you should look for Katie or for Tammy,” Bevilaqua said.
