With Catchings in the shadows, the Sun shines

Will she or won’t she? Only her trainer knows for sure …

If Tamika Catchings’ wounded plantar fascia is healed enough for her to play at anywhere near her peak, Indiana will get a huge mental and physical boost. But despite her optimistic words, there’s no evidence that she will return for Thursday’s first-round game, or at all – and if not, Indiana is just a shadow of the team it was earlier in the season.

Connecticut, luckily, doesn’t resemble the team that went 6-11 to start the season, and with Lindsay Whalen in high gear, the Sun won 10 of 11 at one point. They cooled lately, as their power forward, Asjha Jones, and small forward Nykesha Sales, both nursed injuries, but Connecticut has a history of playoff success to go along with a 4-0 sweep of the regular season series with the Fever.

One reason for that sweep is matchups, and as the following analysis shows, the two teams don’t really mesh. Indiana has to guard a bigger player (Katie Douglas or Nykesha Sales) with a smaller one (Tan White), and no matter which one White guards, she’s overmatched. But if Catchings plays, and plays well, everything changes. But only her trainer knows for sure …

Point guard: Tully Bevilaqua is a pretty good player, but her one weakness – lack of scoring ability – makes this a very good matchup for Connecticut. Lindsay Whalen is not brilliant defensively, but she will have no problem keeping up with Bevilaqua (5.3 ppg, double figures just four times, season high of 13). And though Bevilaqua is a superior defender, Whalen has been playing wonderfully of late (17.0 ppg in her last five), but Bevilaqua is certainly clever enough to take full advantage of Whalen’s ineptitude from long distance. And though Bevilaqua did have 11 against Whalen on June 29, she’s totaled four in the last two games between the two teams. Advantage: Connecticut.

Shooting guard: Anna DeForge is Katie Douglas lite, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – except that DeForge has to go against Douglas in this series. And yes, DeForge did have 29 last week against the Sun, but that was by far her best game of the season, and in fact she scored just four against Connecticut Aug. 4. DeForge is a decent scorer (Douglas is better), a solid defender (Douglas is better), and an adequate ballhandler (Douglas is better). DeForge is a better three-point shooter and free-throw shooter, but Douglas is better in every other regard. Advantage: Connecticut.

Small forward: For the sake of argument, let’s assume Tamika Catchings plays. She’s missed the last 11 games, and has practiced sparingly, if at all, so she’s certainly not going to be 100%. Nykesha Sales isn’t 100% either but she did get 32 against Indiana last week, and she’s a lot closer to being there than Catchings. So even if Catchings comes back, it’s advantage: Connecticut. Most likely, though, Tan White will start, and whether she or DeForge tries to match up with Sales, it’s not going to work, as the last game proved. White is a marvelous athlete, and her quickness might bother Sales more than DeForge’s extra few inches in height, but for Indiana to finally beat the Sun, White’s going to have to make some shots. She’s a career 36.8% shooter, and though she’s at 33.6% from beyond the arc this year, she doesn’t do anything else as well as Sales does. If White starts, a bigger advantage: Connecticut.

Power forward: Asjha Jones has been hurt too, but she’s ready to go, and in fact could have played in the final weekend of the regular season had the games meant much to the Sun. Instead, she’s rested and ready to take on the bigger, slower Ebony Hoffman, who scored zero points and had four fouls in 24 minutes in the teams’ last meeting. It’s possible Brian Winters will go back to starting Tamika Whitmore, but aside from three-point shooting, Jones is the superior player. Either way, this doesn’t work for the Fever. Advantage: Connecticut.

Center: Tammy Sutton-Brown was the prize of the free agent pack last winter, and she lived up to the hype: 12.1 ppg, 5.5 rpg, 1.4 bpg. She’s averaged 16.8 ppg against the Sun, plus 6.8 rpg, and will be the key to Indiana’s hopes of an upset. She needs to get Margo Dydek into foul trouble because if Dydek plays more than 20 minutes, she’s pretty much an automatic double-double against the Fever, not to mention three or four blocks. Dydek, though, has battled a bad back and, as a famous Midwestern senator once said about himself, has never let the clammy hand of consistency lay upon her shoulder for too long. Advantage: Indiana.

Coaching: Mike Thibault has earned a reputation as one of the best coaches in the league, but he also spends far too much time hounding the officials. Two questions, Mike: How many calls have they changed? And have the refs gotten any better because you yell at them all the time? (Thibault was also miked up for the national broadcast Sunday, but after most of the F-word slipped onto the air, we didn’t hear nearly as much from him.) Brian Winters has done a fine overall job with the Fever, but he hasn’t managed to right the ship since Catchings went down. And he certainly can’t beat Thibault. Advantage: Connecticut.

Bench: If Tamika Whitmore continues to come off the bench, she brings more to the floor than any of Connecticut’s subs. She can at least score, and conceivably in bunches. Erica DeSouza? Jamie Carey? Evanthia Maltsi? Not so much. DeSouza is strong but not skilled; Carey can shoot but lacks athleticism; and after a hot start, the league adjusted to Maltsi, and she hasn’t scored more than five points since Aug. 4. And of course, if Catchings plays, that means White is a reserve. Advantage: Indiana.

Intangibles: That 4-0 edge over Indiana sounds like a nice intangible, to be sure, but three of the wins were by five points or fewer, so it’s real worth is hard to calculate. In fact, it’s just as likely to make the Sun overconfident as it is to intimidate the Fever. Still, over the years, Connecticut has owned this matchup, and the Sun have far more playoff experience. A small advantage: Connecticut.

In conclusion: With Tamika Catchings at the top of her game, this is a very interesting series, and Indiana is most likely favored. With Catchings playing at 75% or so, the edge shifts to Connecticut, and if Catchings staggers onto the court as just a shadow of her old self, the advantage becomes even greater. If, as looks more and more probable, Catchings doesn’t play at all (the word is that she’s now doubtful for the FIBA Americas Olympic qualifier in late September), there’s no question. Connecticut rolls.