Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark is coming off a massively successful collegiate career and now sets her sights on carrying over that success to the WNBA starting with her rookie season and with massive expectations hovering.
“That’s what I was most excited for, getting all that other stuff out of the way,” Clark said as the Fever’s training camp officially opened. “The draft was amazing, New York City was amazing, Los Angeles was amazing, but I was excited to get here and get back to playing basketball, you know, doing my job.”
“No matter what happens there’s going to be expectations and pressure on my shoulders and pressure on this team to be really good,” Clark said, according to the Associated Press. “That’s how you want it. We wouldn’t want anything else. We want people showing up to our games, people expecting us to win a lot of basketball games this year and I’m expecting myself to play really well. I don’t think it’s anything that’s ever been different for me.”
Clark now forms a formidable tandem with last season’s WNBA Rookie of the Year Aliyah Brown giving the Fever an exciting pair to build a promising future around.
“Caitlin has a different eye for the game,” Boston said. “You’re able to see how well she passes the ball and how well she shoots it. You see her communicating, you see the way she can find you, I mean her passes are tremendous. I’m like, ‘OK, I’ll get a touch, just let me get down there’ just because of how well she passes it.”
Now Clark will have to transition to the WNBA, and her journey starts with Friday’s preseason opener in Dallas.
“It’s definitely different, but that’s what you expect when you start a new chapter in your life,” Clark said. “It’s fast, fast shot clock, but I think all of you know that’s how I like to play. So I think it suits my game pretty well. It’s a fast pace, a lot faster than college, and you’ve got to learn quicker because you’ve got to get your mind on Friday.”