Sophie Cunningham has continued the Fever’s pattern of calling out officers — and sticking up for star Caitlin Clark.
Following Indiana’s follow Saturday, Cunningham, who was ejected from a sport the place Clark had been shoved to the bottom, instructed reporters that she was transferring on from what occurred towards the Solar on Tuesday however acknowledged that referees must do a greater job of “protecting the star player of the WNBA.”
“I’m not focused on the extracurricular activities,” Cunningham stated, “and you know what? During that, it was just part of the game. I think the refs had a lot to do with that, it was a build-up of a couple of years now of them just not protecting the star player of the WNBA. At the end of the day. I’m gonna protect my teammates, that’s what I do.”
Cunningham, acquired from the Mercury within the offseason, dedicated a tough foul on Jacy Sheldon — who poked Clark close to the attention earlier within the sport — with lower than a minute remaining within the fourth, dragging her to the bottom as she neared the basket.
That prompted shoving between Cunningham, Sheldon and others on the Fever and Solar, and it ended with Cunningham getting ejected and later fined by the league.
These tensions stemmed from Sheldon’s foul on Clark earlier within the sport, when Solar star Marina Mabrey shoved Clark to the bottom when a quick scuffle broke out and didn’t get ejected.
Clark — averaging 19.9 factors, 8.7 assists and 5.7 rebounds per sport in her second WNBA marketing campaign — and the Fever have stumbled to a 6-6 begin, and after a 90-88 loss to the Liberty final month, head coach Stephanie White blasted officers for a “pretty egregious” discrepancy in free throws.
She criticized officiating once more following Tuesday’s chaos and stated “you could tell it was going to happen.”
“When the officials don’t get control of the ballgame, when they allow that stuff to happen, and it’s been happening all season long … you’ve got competitive women who are the best in the world at what they do, and when you allow them to play physical, and you allow these things to happen, they’re going to compete, and they’re going to have their teammates backs,” White instructed reporters Tuesday. “It’s exactly what you expect out of fierce competition. I started talking to the officials in the first quarter, and we knew this was going to happen. You could tell it was going to happen. So they got to get control of it. They got to be better.”
After which Cunningham, who has collected 6.4 factors and 4.3 rebounds by means of her first seven video games with the Fever, turned the newest to deal with the league’s officiating.
Indiana faces Las Vegas on Sunday earlier than persevering with its highway journey to face the Storm on Tuesday.
