Caitlin Clark Misses Seven 3-Pointers After Getting Raked Across the Face in Previous Game

The Indiana Fever lost Thursday night. Not a shocking thing, after all, the Fever are 6-6 on the season. However, it was a particularly awful night for star guard Caitlin Clark in her first game after being brutalized by the Connecticut Sun earlier this week.

Clark went a woeful 0-7 from the three-point land, real estate that she has owned throughout her career, and a very uncharacteristic 3-14 from the field, on her way to an 11-point performance in which the Fever fell to the Golden State Valkyries by a final score of 88-77.

Clark also coughed up six turnovers to add to the bizarre performance.

To be fair, none of the Fever’s players fared well. Indiana went 8-29 from three-point land and only one player, Sophie Cunningham, hit more than one three-point shot. The Fever also committed 11 more turnovers in addition to Clark’s six.

In the game before Thursday night’s loss to the Valkyries, Clark had been raked across the face by Connecticut’s Jacy Sheldon and knocked to the ground by Sun’s guard Marina Mabrey.

While there is no report or evidence that Clark suffered an injury from the eye poke, her bizarrely bad performance on Thursday night marks an abrupt reversal from the tour de force Clark had been on since returning from a three-week absence due to a quad injury.

In her first game back from injury, Clark torched the defending champion New York Liberty, making 7-14 from three-point land and 11-20 from the field, on the way to scoring 32 points.

In the game against the Sun, Clark was 4-6 from three and 6-12 from the field, and finished with 20 points.

Again, there is no direct evidence that Clark is suffering any ill effects from Jacy Sheldon’s flagrant eye-raking. However, the best shooter in the history of the league missing all of her three-pointers after such an incident is not a good look.

The WNBA should really make sure that doesn’t happen again.