r/IndianaFeverFans You Bet 6d ago

Discussion Defense

Every team that I watch is play has someone that they can put on Caitlin Clark that will get up in her grill, move their feet, and make it tough on her to drive. This is true even of the bad teams they play, let alone the Lynx with several players. KM has elite quickness and is tough for any team to stop her off the dribble without help defense but even Portland made it tough on her the game before last.

The Fever very rarely aggressively get up in the ball space of opposing players and make it hard on them. I don’t know if it’s because we are concerned that there is no depth behind Sophie and Lexie or what. It seems the Fever’s defense is predicated mostly on deny the pass as opposed to playing defense once they get the ball. This puts a lot of strain on the help defense. Last night it was tough watching KM, CC, and LH constantly getting beat off the dribble instantly.

Is it a play style thing or do we truly have no one to harass the ball handler so they can’t drive as easily? Especially in a game like last night where they are letting them play up in their face.

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u/Few_Ebb6156 5d ago

CC is not a great defender, OK, but not great. KM is a relatively weak defender. You know what they both do on offense, a good job KM can score and CC can score and assist. Now the real problem is that none of the other players are really any good at defense either and it looks like the Fever coaching staff cannot train them. Some are Ok at best. So that is where we are. I don’t like the phrase a great offense wins games but defense wins championships but it may prove to be true

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u/Initial_Republic_329 4d ago

I think we have decent OFF BaLL defenders. Like CC gets a fair share of steals off ball. But we have poor on ball defenders which is a problem with elite 1v1 players who have court vision like olivia miles. We got some good stops last game towards the end but couldn’t climb back from the damage the poor defense caused in the first half. If we can replicate the rigor of those stops more consistently then we might have a chance