Caitlin Clark thanks referee for technical foul: ‘I think he fired me up’
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Caitlin Clark helped lead the Fever to back-to-back wins after the WNBA season resumed following the Olympic break.
She had 23 points and nine assists in the Fever’s 92-75 victory over the Seattle Storm on Sunday, also breaking the WNBA rookie assist record.
But, she also picked up another technical foul, her fifth of the season.
Clark hit the base of the basket in frustration after missing a three-pointer. The referee gave her a technical foul for the action. The referee told Clark that it was disrespectful to the game of basketball.
“I think he fired me up to continue to play a lot harder,” Clark said, smiling. “I thought we got a lot better after he did that, so I want to thank him.”
Clark made it clear that it was just based off her frustration with herself, and had nothing to do with the other people on the court.
“It had nothing to do with my team,” Clark said. “It had nothing to do with their reffing. It had nothing to do with the other team. It’s just because I’m a competitor, and I felt like I should have been making more shots.”
“That’s like the fire and passion that just gets me going. It’s just finding a way to channel that and use that and I thought I did a really good job of that at the end of the third and the fourth quarter.”
The Fever were excellent in the end of the third quarter and the entire fourth quarter. They were trailing by one point with just over two minutes to go in the third quarter, and flipped that into a 17 point victory.
The five technical fouls puts Clark just two away from a one game suspension.
Fever head coach Christie Sides did not have a problem with the action, but she mentioned she was going to talk to Clark about it.
“That’s the way she gets her frustration out,” Sides said. “I have absolutely no problem with that. It didn’t affect anybody. It wasn’t towards anything.”
The Fever will look to continue their winning ways on Saturday when they take on the Lynx in Minnesota.