Indiana Fever Coach Christie Sides Slams Effort Of Caitlin Clark, Teammates After Ugly Loss

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Caitlin Clark and her Indiana Fever teammates drew the ire of coach Christie Sides on Monday night, who criticized Clark and company’s effort after an 89-72 loss to the Connecticut Sun.

Indiana trailed 26-15 after the first quarterback and never got back into the contest. The loss dropped the Fever to 3-10 on the season and they’re allowing a league-high 89.8 points per game.

Afterward, Sides did not hold back when asked about her team’s performance.

“I’m going to start with how you can’t, at this level, coach effort,” Sides said in her postgame press conference. “I felt like we were just trying to ask them to keep playing hard, play hard. You can’t start there. You can’t play in this league if you have to coach effort. It’s just too hard.”

Caitlin Clark Agrees With Coach’s Criticism Of Indiana Fever’s Effort Level

To her credit, Clark, who struggled mightily in the contest after a solid start offensively, seemed to agree with Sides’ critique.

“This is a team you can’t come out and be lackadaisical against; they’re just that good,” she said of the performance. “They’re going to punch you in the mouth. And I don’t think we had it from the jump, and obviously, that’s a little disappointing.”

Connecticut moved to 10-1 on the season with the victory, the best record in the league.

“I thought we could have played with a lot better energy,” Clark continued. “I thought we let little things on the offensive end frustrate us, and we didn’t play good defense. It’s not a recipe to win many games.”

Clark’s defense was perhaps her biggest flaw coming out of college. Combine that with a startling lack of rim protection and you end up with a team that has both the worst defensive rating and worst net rating of any in the league.