‘These two hurt the most’ - Caitlin Clark laments narrow defeats as Indiana Fever lose again

Caitlin Clark expressed her frustration with narrow defeats after the Indiana Pacers lost a fifth straight WNBA game, going down 85-83 to the Seattle Storm.

The highly-rated rookie has struggled to live up to the hype in the early season but looked more like herself, scoring 21 points despite going into the game with concerns about an ankle injury.

Jewell Loyd top scored with 32 points for Seattle, achieving a double-double with 11 rebounds, while Nnena Ogwumike chipped in with 22 points.

Clark’s Indiana have lost all five of their opening games of the campaign and even though she tried to inspire her side to rally in the second half, the Storm were able to hold off their opponents.

“These two definitely hurt the most,” said Clark, referring to Fever’s 88-84 defeat to Connecticut Sun in their previous match.

“It's just that close and there's so many instances going back and watching the film and little things you can easily fix and clean up that would go a really long way.”

Loyd put her impressive performance down to being in a “good headspace”, saying she “changed my routine a little bit and caught a little rhythm”.

Another positive for Seattle was a debut for Croatia’s Nika Muhl, who finally made her WNBA debut following visa issues. She celebrated that by arriving at the game wearing a t-shirt which simply said ‘Approved’.

“I saw people being mad and I saw so many things online and I was just like, I want to make something funny out of this, I just want to make people laugh” said Muhl, who was in the draft with Clark.

“I'm very happy with the fact that I got to play my first game against her.

“I love Caitlin. We had a lot of fun at the draft together. To get to meet all those people outside of the games, you hate everybody on the floor, you want to compete, but outside we're all good friends and we support each other.”

Indiana will try and record their first win at the sixth attempt against Los Angeles Sparks, in the early hours of Friday morning UK time (0200 BST).

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