Indiana beats Portland 90-73 without Caitlin Clark on the floor, and it was never really in doubt. Indiana Fever Daily — I'm Cassidy, Joey's here, and finally we’ve got a box score to talk about instead of everybody’s theories. Back-to-back wins, Aliyah Boston back and producing, and a 17-point result against a Portland team that came in at .500. And yes, the Uncrustable photo is everywhere. We can say that once, and then we’re onto what Billings and Mitchell actually did, because that’s the part that matters. Let’s get into Kelsey Mitchell’s usage with Clark out, what Boston’s return looked like on the floor, and whether holding Portland to 73 says anything real about that defensive ranking. Sporting News, with Billy Heyen:
But it's a good sign that the Fever, much like last season, could win without her. On Wednesday, Aliyah Boston led the way with 24 points (8-11 FG) and eight rebounds. Kelsey Mitchell had 21 points and four assists.
Boston didn’t just clear the injury report — she ran the game. Twenty-four points on 8-of-11 shooting, eight rebounds. That’s as direct an answer as you can give to the question about whether that practice clearance meant anything. And Lexie Hull going 4-for-4 from three, 4-for-4 from the line — that’s a perfect night. That’s not a cameo. That’s somebody stepping into a starting-caliber gap and not blinking. Portland came in 2-2, same as Indiana, per Swish Appeal. So no, this wasn’t some freebie. And if the Fever were twelfth defensively going in, holding a .500 team to 73 is the kind of result that pushes back on that number. Also worth noting, Sporting News pointed out both Fever losses came when they scored over 100. They win 90-73 without Clark. Maybe the version of this team that actually travels doesn’t need triple digits every night, and nobody wants to say that too loudly yet. From Andrew Gamble at The Mirror US:
The Indiana Fever can take a sigh of relief as Aliyah Boston was not featured on the injury report. On Sunday, the Fever sealed an 89-78 win over the Seattle Storm. Caitlin Clark led the way, scoring 21 points while adding 10 assists and seven rebounds in 24 minutes while Sophie Cunningham came off the bench and added 17 points in an impressive performance.
Aliyah Boston thread, closed. She was back against Portland, the Fever won 90-73, and that Mirror US piece from Andrew Gamble — the one with her listed as questionable to out against Seattle — is just context now. She played. They won by 17. And the way we found out she was okay was what, an X post at one in the morning? The Fever still haven’t said anything cleanly about how the lower-leg thing got resolved. She’s back, great. The information pipeline for this team is still a mess. Fair complaint, but the result is the result: Boston cleared practice, Boston played, and Stephanie White finally got a real box score with her full frontcourt against a 2-2 Portland team. The guessing game is over. Clark out, Boston a game-time question, and we’re supposed to read the Storm win as proof the rotation is deep? Or did we just catch a 1-2 team at the right time? It’s a fair push, and honestly the answer sits in the middle. Seattle came in 1-2, so the difficulty was lower — but Indiana had just been, in IndyStar’s words, punched in the mouth in its first game without Clark, so they needed a response. What that game really stress-tested was the layer under Clark’s gravity: can the secondary ball-handlers make something coherent, does the spacing hold, and can the defense — which White has already called the team’s most urgent problem — do enough to keep the offense from having to be perfect? And that matters even more because White said after the Mystics loss that the Fever, quote, put a lot of pressure on our offense to be perfect when they don’t consistently defend. That’s a structural admission, not just a one-game gripe. Then you stack Boston on top of it: lower-leg injury from Unrivaled in February, missed the first two preseason games, re-aggravated it against Washington — so the frontcourt depth, which people were already flagging as a roster concern, is getting tested three games in. If defense is the load-bearing wall here, what happens when Boston — who’s been the anchor on that end — is limited or out? That’s where it gets legitimately worrying. Against Washington, even with Boston on the floor, Kiki Iriafen went for a career-high 25 points and 13 rebounds, and Shakira Austin added 19 and nine — that Mystics frontcourt pair piled up a huge chunk of their 104 points. If Boston is out of the mix, those interior matchups do not get easier. So watch White’s defensive rotations over the next few games, because if she can’t patch that without Boston, the margin for error on offense doesn’t shrink — it vanishes. Swish Appeal, with Cat Ariail:
Indiana has a net rating of +5.2, which is superior to the team’s season-long net rating for the 2025 season of +4.5. Portland is at -9.0. Put another way, the Fever have outscored their opponents by 15 points over the course of their four games, while the Fire have been outscored by 30 points.
So Swish Appeal was asking the right question before tip: both teams were 2-2, but the net ratings told a different story — Indiana at plus-5.2, Portland at minus-9.0. That’s not a coin-flip matchup. The Fever had already outscored opponents by 15 points across four games before Wednesday even started. And now we’ve got the answer: 90-73, without Clark. Portland was a real .500 team on paper, not some soft spot, so the margin actually says something. The net-rating gap was telling the truth before the record did. Indiana wins by 17, and that plus-5.2 starts to look like a baseline instead of a ceiling — especially with Clark not playing a minute. My only hesitation is that Swish Appeal also pointed out a third of the league is bunched at .500, so we still don’t really know where Portland sits in the actual pecking order. A minus-9 net-rating team beating you would’ve been embarrassing. Winning by 17 is good. I just want to see this rotation against a team with a positive net rating before we start handing out tiers. If you like keeping up with women’s sports every day, try Angel City Daily Podcast — a daily ACFC supporter briefing with match reaction, NWSL standings, roster moves, women’s soccer in Los Angeles, and supporter buzz. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
You’ll find links to everything we covered today in the show notes, so if a headline stuck with you, take a minute and dig into the full story there.
That’s Indiana Fever Daily Podcast for today. Thanks for listening, and we’ll talk again tomorrow. This is a Lantern Podcast.