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Fever end 16-game losing streak to Aces with runaway win, Kelsey Mitchell's surge continues

There was no Commissioner's Cup championship hangover for the Indiana Fever.

Thursday was the afterparty.

The Fever ended a 16-game losing streak to the Las Vegas Aces that started back in the 2020 season and was the second-longest skid any team has had against another opponent in WNBA history. Indiana exorcised those series demons convincingly, staking themselves to a 22-point halftime lead before rolling to an 81-54 victory.

Indiana superstar Caitlin Clark missed her fourth game in a row with a groin injury. But head coach Stephanie White's team continued to hold its own in Clark's latest absence.

The Fever (9-8) are now 3-1 in those four games, although their Commissioner's Cup championship victory over the Minnesota Lynx didn't count toward the league standings.

Even before Clark exited the lineup again, fellow guard Kelsey Mitchell was surging. She continued her hot streak against the Aces (8-9), collecting at least 20 points for the fifth time in the last six games.

Out of the gates, Indiana's offense looked like poetry in motion. Defensively, it felt like the Fever had a sixth defender on the floor.

The Fever put on a ball-screen clinic in the first half while holding the Aces to 25.8% shooting on the other end.

The Aces stalled into a bunch of one-action offense, relying heavily on the elite shotmaking of three-time WNBA MVP A'ja Wilson. She delivered 17 of Vegas' 24 first-half points. Wilson shot 6 of 13, and the rest of her team shot 2 of 18 over the opening two quarters.

Meanwhile, the Fever were moving the ball at will and getting pretty much everything they wanted in the paint, where they scored 28 of their 46 first-half points.

During the second quarter, White deployed a two-point-guard lineup that was especially effective. Aari McDonald and Sydney Colson greased the wheels, and Mitchell, center Aliyah Boston and forward Natasha Howard lit up the box score with 12, 14 and 10 points, respectively, before intermission.

The Aces punched back to start the third quarter with a 6-0 run, in part thanks to a change in defensive strategy. Head coach Becky Hammon opted for zone to combat Indiana's ball-screen offense.

Mitchell was the first Fever player to make a field goal in the second half. She dropped in a reverse layup at the 6:58 mark of the third quarter.

Wilson cut Indiana's lead to 13 before Lexie Hull and Mitchell drained back-to-back 3s to give the Fever some more breathing room again.

Even with a large lead, Indiana didn't take its foot off the gas. Late in the third quarter, Sophie Cunningham stepped in front of an Aces pass in the backcourt and cashed in with a layup that caused a frustrated Hammon to call a timeout.

Wilson's relentless scoring was the silver lining of an otherwise sloppy Aces game. She clocked out with 29 points on 9-of-18 shooting.

Mitchell led the Fever with 25 points in 29 minutes. She also logged six assists.

"I think, for us, it was about making sure we defend for the whole game, and I think that's what you guys saw to get us the points that we got," Mitchell said in a postgame interview, via Prime.

The Aces' 26.2% field goal percentage was the lowest a Fever opponent has shot in 15 years.

Indiana is now over .500 for the first time since June 17.

Vegas, on the other hand, is hovering below that mark. The Aces' nine losses are four fewer than they had all last season, and three more than they had in 2023 during their second-straight WNBA championship campaign.

Vegas isn't playing to its typical standard, but that didn't take away from the magnitude of the Fever's win Thursday.

"I think there's a lot of resilience, a lot of perseverance within our group," Mitchell said. "We're all selfless. We all want for each other, and so, for us, that's what's important. We can't get too high, can't get too low. We got to stay right in the middle."

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