Season In Review: Indiana Fever


As a part of a WNBA.com offseason series, we’ll be taking a look at the seasons of all 12 teams in the league and touching on some of the top reasons to look forward to their 2016 WNBA campaigns.

The 2015 season was supposed to be a transition season for the Indiana Fever. Legendary coach Lin Dunn made way for one of her former assistants, Stephanie White, to take over the head coaching duties for the first time in her career. Additionally, the Fever front office brought in some new faces to build out its roster around their resident legend Tamika Catchings, who said the 2015 season would be her second-to-last year in the league.

And with that announcement from Catchings, a theme was born for Indiana. From the onset of the season, the Fever locker room was incredibly focused on playing for both Catchings and White. For Catchings, the Fever rallied around her because her window for another championship was, of course, dwindling. And for White, Indiana wanted to accomplish something special during her first season as a head coach.

Out of the gates, however, the Fever looked like a middle-of-the-road team in the Eastern Conference. They started the season 1-4 and struggled to find their footing. Before long, though, the benefits of White’s free-flowing offensive system began to pay dividends.

Guard Shenise Johnson excelled in her first year in Indiana, and forward Marissa Coleman emerged as a deadly three-point weapon. Coleman averaged a career-best 10.4 points per game and was a vital part of Indiana’s offensive identity. Oh, and Catchings was still one of the best players in the league.

Catchings averaged 13.1 points and 7.1 rebounds per game and earned a WNBA-record 10th All-Star Game starting nod.

By the time the playoff race kicked into high gear, the Fever were entrenched in a fierce battle for positioning with the Washington Mystics. Ultimately, White’s team secured the No. 3 seed and an Eastern Conference Semifinals matchup against Elena Delle Donne and the Chicago Sky.

After dropping the first game in Chicago, Indiana took the series back to Bankers Life Fieldhouse, where they defended homecourt and forced a winner-take-all third game. The result? A decisive victory. The win clinched a berth in the Eastern Conference Finals against the No. 1 overall seed New York Liberty.

The series’ script was a near exact copy of Indiana’s first round matchup. The Liberty took Game 1, but Indiana used a second half run to take Game 2, again forcing a third and final game with a trip to the WNBA Finals on the line.

Inside Madison Square Garden, Coleman and Johnson silenced the Liberty faithful and punched the Fever’s ticket to the WNBA Finals for a 2012 rematch against Maya Moore and the Minnesota Lynx.

In the Finals, each team traded blows and it took all five games to crown a WNBA champion. In the end, the Fever were bested by the veteran Lynx, who were led by Olympians like Moore, Sylvia Fowles and Seimone Augustus.

Indiana fell short, but not without putting up a valiant fight and endearing themselves to fans across the league.

Reasons To Look Forward To 2016

It’s the Tamika Catchings farewell tour. Arguably one of the best to ever play the game, Catchings is set to embark on her final journey through a WNBA season with the Fever in 2016, and as we saw in 2015, that’s reason enough for Indiana’s locker room to band together.

A year of head coaching experience under White’s belt should do wonders as she’ll look to improve on any areas that plagued Indiana in 2015.