Los Angeles, CA – Los Angeles Sparks came off one of their toughest stretches this season including a previous home game loss to the Seattle Storm to only return home on Wednesday night with a statement victory at Crypto.com Area against a hot Indiana Fever team whom welcome back one of their popular starters, Caitlin Clark but was a non-factor, losing by double digits, 106-92.
The Sparks snapped a three-game losing streak still playing without All-Star and leading scorer, Kelsey Plum as well as Cameron Brink but were able to come up with a big 3 winning combination among Nneka Ogumike, Rae Burell and Dearica Hamby to lead five players in double figures.
“Yeah, that’s how we want to play!” Sparks’ Head Coach Lynne Roberts said. “I thought the ball movement was much much better. 24 assists…The ball was moving and when we play like that, then like I talked about pregame media, like you take better shots…so I thought we shared the ball well tonight and you could see just there was a different energy and connectedness on offense and that’s what the result of that is balanced scoring.”
Sparks had one of their better first halves of the season to enter halftime up seven, 48-41. Fever did not expect this game to be a walk in the park as they expressed during pregame how dangerous it was to play against a seemingly desperate team.
“We’ve got to be connected. We’re missing 36 points a game, right?” Coach Roberts said to FI360News during pregame presser. “Like you can’t make that up with just subbing in one player. So, it’s got to be the sum of the parts is bigger than the whole. I think we can be a dangerous team, but we’ve got to play connected for 40 minutes. “
Sparks came out of halftime even more electrifying to extending their lead to 14, largest of the game. Each time the Fever cut into the deficit, Los Angeles would answer with another run to keep them at bay.
“I thought they did a great job getting the ball out of the net, getting the ball on offense and just pushing, they had a lot of transition points,” Lexie Hull said to FI360News during postgame presser. “27 fast break points. I think they did a really great job of that, pushing the pace. We had a lot of turnovers that led to possessions that we couldn’t get back on defense. So, testament to them and just their aggressiveness on the offensive side.”
While Sparks displayed highlights on offense, their defense still seems to be a work in progress as they struggle to contain Kelsey Mitchell whom scored 29 points for the game. Hull added 12 points and Monique Billings grabbed 12 boards.
Ogumike and Hamby had 24 and 21 points, respectively plus eight rebounds apiece as Sparks dominated on the inside with 60 points in the paint, taking advantage of Aaliyah Boston missing for Indiana.
“I don’t think they did anything that we didn’t expect them to do,” Fever’s Head Coach Stephanie White said to FI360News during postgame presser. “No, I think we certainly understand how capable of a team they are. I felt like we just didn’t match their energy. We didn’t match their toughness. We didn’t match their effort tonight.”
Sparks played all five starters over 25 minutes while Fever kept Clark on playing restrictions to just 16 minutes.
Burrell finished with 22 points, and their starting backcourt of Erica Wheeler and Ariel Atkins both added 12 points each.
The Fever had four players in double digits but only Mitchell scored over 20.
Next up for Los Angeles as they conclude this week three game homestead is Chicago Sky on Friday, July 10th, 7pm and return of a couple of former Sparks.
