INDIANAPOLIS — Elena Delle Donne scored 26 points and had 10 rebounds to lead the Washington Mystics to a WNBA best 3-0 with a 93-84 win over the Indiana Fever Thursday night at Bankers Life Fieldhouse.
Indiana would fall despite a season high 84 points on 48 percent shooting. Washington outrebounded Indiana 35-23, allowing Indiana to only collect one offensive rebound. The Mystics outscored the Fever 13-3 in second chance points.
“You’re not going to win many games if you’re giving up 93 points,” said Fever head coach Pokey Chatman. “It negates some of the positive things. You get off to the quick start you wanted to get off to, you do a decent job of moving the basketball I think, 20 assists on 29 field goals. In actuality it should have been 26 assists on 30 something field goals… You have to ask yourself, did Washington stop us or did we stop ourselves?”
The Mystics would have five players score in double digits including Delle Donne, guard Kristi Toliver who had 13 points and four assists, Tiana Hawkins had 13 points and five rebounds off the bench, Monique Currie added 12 points, and Tierra Ruffin-Pratt would finish with 10 for Washington.
The Fever were paced by rookie guard Kelsey Mitchell, who drew the first start of her WNBA career after scoring a combined 36 points in the last two games coming off the bench. She would score a career high 25 points. 25 is the most points scored by a Fever rookie since 2005.
Fever forward Candice Dupree would have 21 points on 8-11 shooting and seven rebounds, while guard Tiffany Mitchell added 13 points and seven assists for Indiana.
The Fever got off to their best start in the young season, scoring 28 points in the game’s opening quarter, their highest scoring quarter of the season. The Fever started the game on a 13-6 run that would give them an early lead, but a 9-0 run by Washington at the end of the first would end the quarter tied at 28-28.
The second quarter was a back and forth battle, with the Mystics taking a nine-point lead, 46-37, late in the second quarter. Indiana would respond, with a contested layup by Tiffany Mitchell and a 3-pointer by Kelsey Mitchell closing the gap to just four. A Kristi Toliver 3-pointer in the final moments of the second quarter would give the Mystics a 51-44 lead going into the half.
The Fever and Mystics were led by their All-Star forwards in the first half, as Dupree and Delle Donne both poured in 14 points to pace their respective team.
“It’s too easy for other teams,” Dupree says of the Fever’s struggles on defense. “Then offensively we’re almost shooting ourselves in the foot. I thought we had great pace to start off the game, but kind of later in the game we went away from what was working for us early.”
After shooting 51.6 percent in the first half, Indiana would shoot just 6-18 from the field in the third, as the team struggled to find offense.
Dupree started off the third quarter with five straight points for Indiana, but Delle Donne would take over the rest of the quarter for the Mystics, adding 10 points and giving the Mystics a 15-point lead, their largest of the game through three quarters.
Washington would continue to control the game in the fourth quarter, ballooning their lead as high as 17 and never allowing Indiana within nine points of the lead.
“We were always one step ahead,” says Kelsey Mitchell about the first quarter. “And then the lapses start…next thing you know we’re down 20. If we can just kind of minimize the holes and keep it consistent we’ll be in a good position.”
Indiana falls to 0-4 on the season for just the second time in team in history and the first time since 2001, the team’s second season in the WNBA.
The Fever will continue to look for their first win of the season with a visit to Connecticut on Saturday for a matchup with the Sun.
Highlights
Postgame