Caitlin Clark was mad at herself. She wasn’t having her best shooting night, and the Indiana Fever star let her frustrations boil over when she struck the backboard after missing 3 in Sunday’s game vs. Seattle.

She was whistled for a technical foul — her fifth of the season, two shy of a one-game suspension.

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“I got a technical for basically being mad at myself because I missed a 3, and then I went and hit the backboard, and he told me it was disrespectful to the game of basketball,” Clark said after Indiana’s 92-75 win over the Storm on Sunday. “… It reminded me of the technical I got in college, where I said ‘damn it,’ where it’s like a personal frustration.

Had nothing to do with my team, had nothing to do with the reffing, 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, so…

“But I think he fired me up to continue to play a lot harder.

I thought we got a lot better after that. I want to thank him for that.

But overall, I thought once we got to that media timeout around 5 minutes in the third quarter, I thought we all kind of took a breath.

It was all chaos there for 2 ½ minutes.

I think I could have done a better job of regaining my cool but that’s like the fire and passion that just gets me going, its just finding a way to channel that, use that, and I think I did a real good job of that at the end of the third quarter, start of the fourth quarter.”

The Fever (13-15) outscored the Storm 33-17 in the fourth quarter and have now matched last year’s win total with 12 games left in the regular season.

“She was frustrated, and she went, you know, she hit the pad of the rim, I mean, she’s done that several times, but we’ve never, I don’t think she’s been T’d up for that,” Fever coach Christie Sides said postgame.

“That’s the way she gets her frustration out.

I have absolutely no problem with that, it didn’t affect anybody.

It wasn’t towards anything. So we just have to be consistent on that call.

I mean, that hadn’t been a technical on her before.

I’m going to, you know, figure out how to talk to her after I talk to Sue, and see how we need to move forward.”