Hoops Tonight - Aces-Fever Reaction: Caitlin Clark STRUGGLES, A'ja Wilson breaks WNBA SCORING RECORD

something simple like a player to score a touchdown. Go to the Draft Kings Sportsbook app and make your bet today. You can also bet on who's gonna win the Super Bowl Right now. DraftKings has the Kansas City Chiefs as the favorite at plus five hundred, followed by the San Francisco forty nine ers at plus six hundred. Ready to do a touchdown dance of your own? New DraftKings customers bet five dollars to get two hundred and fifty dollars in bonus bets instantly and get one month of NFL

Plus Premium. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app and use code hoops that's hoops, that's code hoops for new customers to get two hundred and fifty dollars in bonus bets when you bet just five bucks and get one month of NFL Plus premium only on DraftKings. The Crown is yours.

Gambling problem called one eight hundred gambler in New York call eight seven seven eight hope and why, or text hope and why to four six seven three six nine and Connecticut help is available for problem gambling Call eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG dot org. Please play responsibly on behalf of Boothill Casino and Resort in Kansas twenty one plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction void in Ontario. Bonus bets

expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. For eligibility terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG dot co slash ft ball. NFL Plus premium offer available only to new and former NFL Plus subscribers. Additional NFL Plus premium terms at NFL dot com slash terms. All Right, welcome to hoops tonight here at the volume heavy Winesday. Everybody.

If you guys are having a great week, we are going to be reacting to the Las Vegas aces, going on the road and getting a huge win in Indiana against a red hot Fever team that had won ten of their previous thirteen games, pretty much shutting down their offense, the same offense that had been the number one offense in the league over that thirteen game span. We're gonna break down that game from the perspective of both teams, and then we'll get out of here for the night.

You guys have the job before we get started. Subscribed to Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLT so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you't your podcast under Hoops Tonight. We also it's really helpful if you live your rating

in a review on the podcast feed. And last not at least keep ropping mail back questions in those YouTube comments so we can keep hitting them throughout the rest of the fall. All right, let's talk some basketball. So

a little bit of an unstoppable force versus an immovable object. Today, right, thirteen previous games the Indiana Fever, we're ten and three, number one offense in the WNBA, versus Las Vegas Aces team that is the two time defending champ, has been the fifth best defense in the league on the season, but also has been ramping it up as of late as they've been trying to get ready to defend and finish off a three peat, and they've been the number two defense in the WNBA in the previous five games

and so difficult challenge. Right this Fever offense has been really really good. They've been scoring in transition a lot. They've been the only the Las Vegas Aces are actually the best transition scoring team in the WNBA, but the end of Indiana Fever actually second on that list, and especially as of late in the last couple of months, they've been really really active in transition. They're constantly looking to push Kelsey Mitchell is second in the WNBA in

transition points scored according to Synergy. Melissa Smith has done a lot of great work in transition. Kaitln Clark just constantly throwing kick ahead passes for the modern NBA fan think like Tyrese Haliburton with those kickhead passes, with the old school NBA fan thing like Steve Nash, the idea of constantly looking for someone running their lane with the

opportunity to avoid facing the set defense. Indiana has also struggled a little bit with ball pressure at times this season, and that's just another way that they can try to avoid that right and then when they get in the half court, they just have this beautiful five out motion that they've been running. They've been just the quintessential example

of modern five out offense. With Kelsey Mitchell on one side of the floor and Caitlin Clark on the other side of the floor, two really good screeners and rollers that can also punish post mismatches in Aliah Boston and Alissa Smith with Lexi. With Lexi hold as being one of the most deadly catch and shoot shooters in the entire WNBA this season, just spacing the floor over on the weak side, they've just been really really hard to guard. They get the ball from side to side and run

multiple actions on the same possession. They're excellent at running decoy actions. They'll have like Aliah Boston go set a ball screen and then as she's rolling, they'll have Kelsey Mitchell come out of the opposite corner and like set a cross screen force she'll get a quick post catch on the other side, so it's like a fake ball

screen that's designed to set up a post up. Or they'll have Kaitlyn Clark run on one side and reverse the ball, and then they'll have a Leah Boston dribble at Kelsey Mitchell and then she'll come up like she's gonna catch it, and then she'll just quickly cut back door and get a wide open layup along the baseline. It's a beautiful offense to watch, but it depends on

two things in order for it to function. It depends on Caitlin and Kelsey getting separation on screens, and it depends on Aliah Boston and Melissa Smith scoring in the role and beating mismatches in the post. Right. Those are the two things that unlock that offense. Why because if you can't get separation on the screen, if you're Caitlin Clark,

you can't bring up the screen defender. You have to bring up the screen defender to open up those pocket pass feeds to Aliah Boston as she's rolling to the rim. If the on ball defender is staying attached to Caitlin, then the person guard Aliah Boston doesn't have to come out as often or as aggressively, which prevents those easy catches on the role, right, and then when you're getting the ball into the role and when you're getting the

ball into the paint for those deep post catches. It's a huge part of Indiana's offense that Aliah Boston's just been a monster as of late, just torching people, just straight post up action. That was how she closed out the game against Atlanta the other night, if you guys remember, right, and so like, those are the two most important parts of what makes the Indiana offense work. Caitlyn's got to get separation on screens and Aliah Boston's got to score

on the role and score in the paint. Then, obviously to lesser extent, the same goes for Kelsey Mitchell as well as Melissa Smith. And I just got to hand it to the Aces. They did an amazing job in this game. Physical ball pressure on Caitlin all over the floor. Did a good job too of kind of game, the gamesmanship of working the refs like constantly being super physical with Caitlin. But then anytime Caitlyn was physical back, they'd flop and throw their heads back and got a couple

of offensive foul calls in her that way. That's just smart gamesmanship. If you're watching on your couch and you're like, oh, it's a bad call. Bad calls are part of the game. You want to try to manipulate as many bad calls in your favor as you can and avoid as many of them as you can, right, That's part of basketball.

And Jackie Young in particular, as well as Tiffany Hayes, I thought, just did a really good job just getting up in Caitlin's jersey and just making it so that the screen defender for the Aces just didn't have to as consistently or as aggressively come out to the level

of the screen. And then the entire ACES frontline is massive and athletic, and they just played really good physical defense on Aliah Boston as well as Melissa Smith, and the Aces held Caitlyn Clark and Aliah Boston to nine for thirty two from the field, as well as just twenty two points. I want to qualified a little bit like there's a certain amount of like bad night going on there. Leah Boston missed some of her like little hook shots and pushots around the basket that she normally makes,

especially at the tail end of the game. In the fourth quarter, I thought Caitlin got I thought in the early part of the game, kateln and was forcing the issue a little bit. She took a couple of bad shots, a little bit worked up by just the emotion of the matchup. But down in the second half of the game, I thought she was playing some pretty good basketball and she was just missing. She couldn't hit the like She's been one of the very best catch and shoot players

in the league this year. She's been particularly deadly flying off of off ball action to hit threes and got a couple looks like that couldn't make them. She had a couple of really clean looks off the dribble in the fourth quarter that were off. She had that completely unguarded catch and shoot three on the right wing that was in the final like two three minutes or so that she left way short. Like some of it was just Caitlin's first bad game in a very long time,

and bad games happened in basketball. But at the same time, like I want to credit the Las Vegas Aces defense as well. They just did a really, really nice job.

And then on the other end of the floor, you know what makes the Aces so hard to guard is they just have really good guard play alongside one of the best and most dynamic scores in terms of screening and short rolling to the elbow that you'll find in the kind of similar it's a little bit more of an athletic and quick decision making type of vibe, but kind of reminds me of some of the stuff we see with Joel Embiid and Philly right, like constantly screening

and rolling to the elbows where he can look for quick ISOs in like kind of advantage situations there. But it starts with a bunch of really good guards for the Aces that are good at turning the corner and getting downhill. Again, similarly to the Caitlin Clark factor. With Kaitlyn Clark, she does get a lot of dribble penetration as well, but a lot of the times the way she'll open up things on the pocket is just by bringing the defender up to the level of the screen

right as we talked about earlier. She gets a little separation from her defender just by setting them up for the screen. Then she'll come off of that action and bring the screen defender up, at which point she can throw that pocket pass right, but with the aces guards, it's more about getting downhill, and when they get downhill,

they engage that screen defender. And at that point, as the guard is chasing over the top and the screen defender is meeting the driving guard, Asia just kind of hangs out around the elbow where those pocket passes can come back to her. And then she's just been deadly as a scorer at the elbows all season. Obviously, as you guys saw, she just had tonight set the record the single season scoring record in WNBA history, But a big part of it is her scoring there at the elbow.

She's just absolutely deadly as a mid range jump shooter, shooting about forty six percent on high volume on long twos in that area. Doesn't really matter if it's you know, along to out, you know, seventeen eighteen feet or if it's a little closer twelve thirteen feet, she's just like clockwork, like forty five forty six percent, like she's just gonna knock down those shots. And then she can drive closeouts from that position about as well as anybody in the league.

As you saw the play that ice the game, just a simple rip through to the left, extend out, draw the contact, and finish off the glass. She's one of the best athletes in the league, one of the best mid range shooters in the league. Let's just let's cut the shit for a second. Agia Wilson is definitively the best player in the WNBA. This Caitlin Clark story is

really cool and for a rookie, she's completely unbelievable. She's arguably been the second best player in the WNBA over the last two months or so, and she has a really good chance to finish second in MVP voting. We have a whole video that I worked on today. I did about thirty five minutes on Caitlin Clark and everything she does to unlock the Indiana fever offense, as well as what Kelsey Mitchell does as well as with Aliah Boston and Alissa Smith, do an extensive film dive into

what makes the fever so devastating on offense. And I want you guys to check that video out when we get to the end of this week. It's gonna be I think it's coming out on Friday, if I remember correctly, possibly Tomorrow's keep an eye on the feeds. I'll tweet it out when it comes out. But all that's really cool. But make no mistake, Asia Wilson is the best and it's not particularly close. In addition to being a deadly high volume score, she's also one of the very best

defensive players in the league. And it was kind of interesting to see the dynamic of this game as it shifted. So like the Aces bench really started to grow the lead in that second quarter run. And we go into the third quarter and the Aces are up by nine, and predictably, Indiana comes out. They play some really good basketball in the early third quarter. They end up cutting the lead way down. It gets close, It gets a little bit hairy there for a second, but then from there.

One of the issues that Indiana was having was clean catches for Ajia Wilson around the elbow, and so one of the problems they were having is they had to give up those clean catches because they weren't doing a good job on the ball the way they were with Caitlin Clark on the other end of the floor. So the Aces guards were getting deep dribble penetration, which forced the Indiana forwards to catch to catch the ball handler on the drive. Right that is going to leave Ajia

Wilson wide open. So the way Indiana reacted to that is they started to rotate from the weak side. Usually Melyssa Smith, but whoever it was that was nearby, would rotate from the weak side and throw the contest at Ajia Wilson. From there, Ajia Wilson started to pick them apart with the pass. You guys, remember Kelsey Plum gets wide open right corner, three sheets, another one, a couple possessions later, and then Alicia Clark that fourth quarter hit a couple huge ones as well, And so it's that

classic push and pull right. You try to defend the action two on two. You defend the action two on two, but you're getting too deep with your dribble penetration. That's causing problems. So now Asia Wilson's catching clean around the elbow. Okay, So we want to take away the catching clean around the elbow. So we start to rotate from the weak side. As soon as we start to rotate from the weak side.

Now we're in rotation, and the Aces just have a lot of really good players and they're gonna beat you just by moving the ball around and getting to the open to the open shooter right and so from there the Aces quickly pulled back away as we talked about a couple of good looks for Caitlin Clark that she missed a couple of tough miss free throws from Melissa Smith as well as Fake Bentley, and it was just an impressive effort on both ends of the floor from

the Aces to get their fifth win in their last six games. Looking championship ready, and we will see what happens. We plan on doing some coverage around the WNBA in the playoffs, so make sure you subscribe to the hoops and at YouTube channel, call me on Twitter at Underscore jsonlt. I'll be sending out show announcements as well as when I post that Indiana fever clip. You guys can find that on my Twitter feed, but I'll tweet it out, but you can also find it on our YouTube channel

as well as wherever you get your podcasts. All right, guys, that is all I have for tonight. As always, as sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting the show. For all of you who are new, don't forget to subscribe and circle back over the next month as we cover the WNBA playoffs. I appreciate you, guys, and I'll see you next time the volume. What's up guys? As always, I

appreciate you for listening to and supporting OOPS tonight. It would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.