Michael Voepel
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Michael Voepel
ESPN Senior WriterMichael Voepel is a senior writer who covers the WNBA, women’s college basketball and other college sports. Voepel began covering women’s basketball in 1984, and has been with ESPN since 1996.
Alexa Philippou
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Alexa Philippou
ESPNCovers women’s college basketball and the WNBA
Previously covered UConn and the WNBA Connecticut Sun for the Hartford Courant
Stanford graduate and Baltimore native with further experience at the Dallas Morning News, Seattle Times and Cincinnati EnquirerSep 1, 2024, 08:43 PM ET
Rookies Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese keep extending their history-making seasons as the WNBA enters the final weeks of the playoff race.
Sunday, they did it again.
Chicago forward Reese became the WNBA’s single-season rebounding leader, passing retired superstar Sylvia Fowles. Indiana guard Clark became the first WNBA player ever to have back-to-back games in the regular season with at least 25 points and 10 assists.
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Reese’s 19 boards in the Sky’s loss at Minnesota moved her to 418 in 32 games, surpassing Fowles’ 404 in 34 games in 2018. Reese said afterward she wasn’t aware of the record.
“Tell me what I did, so I know,” Reese said in the Sky’s postgame press conference. “Because I’m not on social media. My manager has my social media, so I’m not familiar with what’s going on.”
When told she had passed the rebounding mark of fellow former LSU star Fowles, Reese said she had been confident in that strength from college translating immediately to the WNBA, which it has. But her big concern now is that the Sky have lost six games in a row.
“I don’t know the individual accolades that I get,” Reese said. “When we start winning, then, OK, cool, congrats. I just want to focus on winning right now.”
Meanwhile, Clark’s Fever squad beat Dallas 100-93 Sunda, has won four in a row and is now 17-16. The last season in which Indiana finished with a record better than .500 was 2015, when the Fever went 20-14 and made the WNBA Finals. The Fever’s last playoff appearance was in 2016, when they finished 17-17 in the regular season. Sunday’s victory snapped a streak of 189 games, dating back to June 2019, in which the Fever were not above .500.
While the Fever’s playoffs’ prospects are soaring and the Sky have to get back on the right track, the two rookies who have brought so many eyes to the WNBA this year are just getting better.
Caitlin Clark: Making points
Voepel: Clark is now averaging 18.7 points and a league-leading 8.4 assists. She has scored or assisted on 37.3% of the Fever’s points this season; that will be a WNBA record if she stays there. The current mark is 36.8% for Courtney Vandersloot, then with Chicago. She did that in 2020, when the WNBA’s regular season was 22 games because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Earlier this season, Clark set the rookie season assist record and is on pace to break the overall assist record, too. Sunday, she had 28 points and 12 assists in the Fever’s win at Dallas, which was the first time in franchise history Indiana has scored at least 100 points in back-to-back games. The Fever beat Reese and Chicago 100-81 Friday.
“Just playing fast, playing off one another, that’s probably the biggest thing,” Clark said, especially referring to the success she and fellow guard Kelsey Mitchell have had since WNBA play resumed after the Paris Games.. “We’re shooting it well, we’re looking for each other, we’re getting downhill.”
Philippou: Since the Olympic break, the Clark-Mitchell pairing has been an unstoppable force of nature, and it was more of the same on Sunday. With the way Clark is driving so much of the Indiana offense through both her facilitating and her scoring, talk has escalated over whether she will make an all-WNBA team and whether she could earn MVP votes. Remember, voters rank five players on their ballots, so A’ja Wilson for example could still be the unanimous MVP, but Clark could wind up elsewhere in voters’ rankings. With seven games left, including four against under .500 teams, that could be the direction things are going.
Watching the Fever over the last two weeks, it’s hard not to wonder just how far that duo can take Indiana this fall. Could they make a run for the four or five seed if the Aces and Storm continue to stumble? Even if not, no team is going to want to see Indiana and its high-powered offense in a first-round series, where all the Fever would have to do is split the first two games on the road to ensure what would undoubtedly be a raucous Game 3 atmosphere at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
Angel Reese: Cleaning up
Philippou: Reese reflected on Sunday about how she knew her motor would translate to the pro game, especially in how it manifests in rebounding the ball. That perhaps was what many pro talent evaluators underestimated before her arrival in the league. Reese knows she has strides to make in her game, as any rookie does. But her knack for the ball and competitive fire is now unquestionable with her name in the record books tied to so many rebounding achievements, regardless of experience level. And, she reiterated Sunday, it’s not just because she’s rebounding her own misses, or because she’s the tallest player on the court (she’s just 6-foot-3). And what’s promising long-term for Chicago is Reese seems poised to take that same drive and desire to win into her offseason and use it to continue to develop her game.
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The fact that as a rookie she’s already surpassed milestones held by the likes of legends like Sylvia Fowles and Tina Charles is nothing short of remarkable. Next, with 24 double-doubles after Sunday, she is well within reach of breaking the single-season double-double record of 28 set by Alyssa Thomas in 2023.
Voepel: The Sky’s Teresa Weatherspoon has played or coached with and against many of the best post players in women’s hoops history. A guard with Louisiana Tech, USA Basketball and in the WNBA, Weatherspoon also spent time coaching in the NBA. She attributes Reese’s rebounding prowess to a massive amount of want-to.
“It’s a mindset. She wants it,” Weatherspoon said. “She’s not going to allow a box-out to keep her from getting an offensive rebound. She’s very physical down there. It’s a desire. She goes hard after it. She takes it very personally. She’s very serious about her work of getting rebounds. She knows that’s the thing she brings to this team to help us be successful, and she’s mastering that role.”
Reese said, however, she doesn’t think that’s enough. She has taken the Sky’s losing streak hard, and wants to do everything possible to end it.
“It can’t just be rebounding,” she said. “It has to be more.”
https://www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/41087866/caitlin-clark-points-angel-reese-rebounds-set-wnba-rookie-milestones-same-afternoon
