Indiana Fever Preseason Brings Many Questions

The Indiana Fever will host Houston on Wednesday at Conseco Fieldhouse in their first pre-season game of the year. The Fever went into last season full of championship dreams and came out of the season with many problems to be solved. The resignation of Head Coach Nell Fortner just added to the worries of the Fever fans and organization. This year's season begins with as many questions about where the team is headed and whether or not the organization has done what is necessary to get the team on the right track.

(PRWEB) May 4, 2004 -- The Indiana Fever will host Houston on Wednesday at Conseco Fieldhouse in their first pre-season game of the year.

The Fever went into last season full of championship dreams and came out of the season with many problems to be solved. The resignation of Head Coach Nell Fortner just added to the worries of the Fever fans and organization.

This year's season begins with as many questions about where the team is headed and whether or not the organization has done what is necessary to get the team on the right track.

New coach Brian Winters hopes to be one of the solutions to the problems that the team faced. Winters is new to the women's game and his prior coaching experience in the NBA really doesn't give any indication of his coaching abilities or if he even has any as he was a coach for an expansion team, the Grizzlies before hardly being given any chance for a struggling Golden State squad. The former college All-American and NBA standout has been an assistant for some successful coaches including the NBA's all-time winningest coach, Lenny Wilkens.

One problem that the Fever faced throughout last year was that their offense seemed to stagnate and once again too much of the load was put on the shoulders of All-Star Forward, Tamika Catchings. The Fever have made many off season moves in addition to the hiring of Winters that are designed to help get the offense moving again and to get Catchings some help.

Gone from last year's team are veterans Sonja Henning and Coquese Washington, who retired in the off season, as well as Nikki McCray and Olympia Scott-Richardson, who were both not resigned as free agents. McCray will play for Phoenix and Scott-Richardson will play for Charlotte.

In their place, the Fever are hoping to strike gold with Deanna Jackson, who they acquired in the dispersal draft from the failed Cleveland franchise; Kelly Miller, who came to the Fever in a trade with Charlotte for draft picks; Astou Ndiaye-Diatta, who was signed as a free agent after coming from Detroit where she only saw action in the postseason due to giving birth to triplets; Kate Starbird, who played in 9 games last season for Seattle., They also hope to get a lot out of their draft picks, Ebony Hoffman and Ieva Kublina.

On the surface, many question many of the off season moves but hopefully for the Fever, they are the right moves to go with their new style of offense. The team needs to get more help from other players than Catchings, Natalie Williams and Kristen Rasmussen, the three most reliable players on the roster.

Point guards Coretta Brown and Niele Ivey were both very inconsistent throughout the season and this year they will have the chance to prove that it was the system and the odd substitution patterns that made their level of play suffer rather than their abilities. Both had some tremendous games before turning around and struggling in the following games. Brown, in particular, was in the running for Rookie of the Year consideration through the early part of the season before losing playing time and sometimes not even playing at all. Ivey suffered from broken bones in her hand in the early part of the season and wasn't given much chance to prove herself once she recovered.

The absence of McCray should give the two more time to show their stuff.

Defensive rebounding was another point of concern for the 2003 Fever squad. There were so many times throughout the year that the defense would stop the other team and force them to throw up a desperate shot before the shot clock expired and then the other team would get an offensive rebound and be able to set up their offense and run through another shot clock. This proved to be extremely demoralizing to the team as well as causing them to waist extra energy on defense. By the time they got the ball, they would be recovering from what had transpired on the other end of the court.

Again, Catchings, Rasmussen and Williams seemed to be the only ones that were able to get any rebounds for the team. The Fever are hoping that the additions of 6'3 Ndiaye-Diatta, 6'2 Hoffman and 6'4 Kublina are going to help in that aspect. 6'3 Leigh Aziz and 6'4 Kelly Schumacher find themselves fighting for a spot on the roster after starting last year with so much promise.

Aziz, as a rookie last season, never did get to play much and was always said to be the last person on the bench. Schumacher, though, was supposed to be the answer to many of the Fever's problems after sparking the Fever at the end of the 2002 season and staying around during the off season to work on her game. Instead of being the starting center for the squad, she ended up only starting in one early game and only averaging 14 minutes per game as Rasmussen ended up getting the nod, instead. Whether or not this was a problem in her play or in the coaching remains to be seen but she did average 5.6 points in those 14 minutes and almost a block per game.

A lot of attention by the fans is going to be given to the performance of Kelly Miller and the two draft picks, Hoffman and Kublina due to some skepticism about the high cost of acquiring Miller.

The Fever did get Miller and the ninth pick in the draft, which they used to select Hoffman, a three-time All-Pac 10 First-team selection and the first Pac-10 player to ever tally more than 1,500 career points, 1,000 rebounds and 245 steals, in exchange for the third and eighteenth picks in the draft. Miller was the National Player of the Year in her junior year of college but has only managed to average 4.9 points and 1.2 assists in her WNBA career.

That third pick that the Fever gave up had an unknown value to it because they could have traded it to Minnesota, who were doing anything for the opportunity to draft Lindsay Whalen, who went as the fourth pick. They also could have made other moves with the pick or even picked All-Americans Nicole Ohlde or Chandi Jones. Charlotte used the third pick to get All-American, Nicole Powell and the eighteenth pick to get Big Ten Player of the Year, Kelly Mazzante.

And, the biggest question on the minds of most Fever fans is about the health of veteran shooting guard Stephanie White, who suffered a terrible injury and is fighting back from off-season surgeries. She has been the backbone of the organization and was phenomenal when given the opportunity to play during Fortner's tenure.

White is expected to be back at some point in the season and she hopes to be ready to go by the start of the regular season, which would be an incredible comeback for an ACL injury.