WNBA Players Assaulted Caitlin Clark During Game, but Refs Slapped HER With a Foul

Caitlin Clark found herself the victim of literal assault on Tuesday night.

Her team, the Indiana Fever, demolished the Connecticut Sun 88-71, and Clark was a huge part of that victory, racking up 20 points with six assists. But things got ugly in the third quarter when Sun guard Jacy Sheldon nailed Clark in the face, a hit that looked anything but accidental. 

And just when it seemed things couldn’t get any uglier, Sun guard Marina Mabrey escalated it by body-checking Clark, forcing her to fall to the floor. That’s when the benches nearly cleared and the officials finally stepped in, handing out a flurry of technical fouls.

Imagine not kicking Marina Mabrey out after she assaults the face of the league? Just a common tech? Sick league @WNBA Also shouldn’t have been a tech on Caitlin since that girl got in her face after gouging her eyes. pic.twitter.com/bnqKCt9voO

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) June 18, 2025

Fox News has more:

Tempers flared multiple times during the Indiana Fever’s win over the Connecticut Sun on Tuesday with Caitlin Clark being at the center of the escapades once again.

Clark and Sun guard Jacy Sheldon were getting chippy at the beginning of the game, but it was not until the third quarter that tensions boiled over. Sheldon poked Clark in the eye, and it set off a skirmish that ended with Sun guard Marina Mabrey shoving Clark to the ground.

Clark, for some reason, was assessed a technical foul during the incident, as was Mabrey and Sun veteran Tina Charles. Sheldon’s common foul was upgraded to a flagrant.

It was not the only incident as Fever guard Sophie Cunningham delivered a hard foul onto Sheldon, who reacted angrily. There was a ton of pushing and shoving along the baseline and officials later ejected Cunningham, Sheldon and Lindsay Allen.

Fever head coach Stephanie White didn’t hold back after Tuesday night’s chaos. Furious with the officiating, White slammed the refs for losing control early and letting the game spiral — something she says has been a problem all season.

“I think it was pretty obvious that stuff was brewing,” White said. “When officials don’t get control of the ball game, when they allow that stuff to happen … it’s been happening all season long, all season long.”

White also revealed that refs gave her zero explanation for slapping Caitlin Clark with a technical, despite the fact that she took the cheap shots. Once again, the league’s brightest star gets roughed up while the officials look the other way.

"This is what happens," White said. "You’ve got competitive women who are the best in the world at what they do, and when you allow them to play physical, and you allow these things to happen, they’re gonna compete, and they’re gonna have their teammates’ backs. It’s exactly what you would expect out of fierce competition. I started talking to officials in the first quarter, and we knew this was gonna happen. You knew this was gonna happen. They gotta get control of it. They gotta be better. They gotta be better.”

Clark entered the WNBA with the potential to be a game-changer. Her record-breaking college career and explosive popularity brought unprecedented attention to a league long plagued by financial losses and low viewership. She was packing arenas, generating headlines, and sparking national interest — something no player had managed to do at this scale. Thanks to her draw, the league, notorious for losing money, lost $10 million less than projected.

But instead of the league embracing her, Clark found herself the target of resentment from some black and LGBT players and commentators who accused her of benefiting from white and straight privilege. The backlash wasn’t just verbal; she has taken literal cheap shots on the court and faced open hostility from veterans who resented the attention she brought. Rather than unify the league, her success highlighted deep cultural and political rifts within it.

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