Caitlin Clark put kiki rice into the conversation around Indiana’s latest win by calling Kelsey Mitchell “the best scorer in the league today” after Mitchell’s 28-point night against the New York Liberty. The comment, shared through Indiana Fever’s official Instagram account, shifted the spotlight from Clark’s own big game to Mitchell’s scoring burden.
Mitchell’s 28 points
Mitchell finished with 28 points in Indiana’s win over the New York Liberty, the defending champions. That number is the cleanest measure of why Clark’s praise landed the way it did: Indiana got a high-volume scoring night from Mitchell, then used it to take one of its biggest victories of the season.
Clark and Mitchell have become one of the WNBA’s most dangerous backcourts, and Indiana has emerged as one of the league’s most formidable contenders. The pairing matters because the team’s offense now has two players who can bend a game in different ways, with Mitchell handling the volume scoring and Clark still driving attention every time she touches the ball.
Clark’s record-book night
Clark’s own historic performance in the victory over New York complicates the story in a useful way. She continued rewriting the WNBA record book, but the public praise went to Mitchell instead, which says something about how Indiana is choosing to frame its offense: the team can feature one star performance and still hand the spotlight to another scorer who carried the actual point total.
That matters for a Fever team pushing toward the postseason. If Mitchell keeps giving Indiana 28-point nights and Clark keeps creating the attention that opens them up, the offense becomes harder to guard in a short stretch of games, especially against the kind of team New York has been over the last season.
Indiana’s offensive hierarchy
The immediate read is simple: Clark’s quote was not just praise, it was a public ranking of how Indiana wants this offense understood right now. Mitchell is the scorer. Clark is the engine. Together, they are the reason Indiana can take a result like this and turn it into leverage for the stretch run.
