Fever falter without Caitlin Clark as Liberty dominate heading into All-Star weekend

The Indiana Fever fell to the New York Liberty in their final encounter before the All-Star break this weekend as star guard Caitlin Clark was sidelined with a groin injury Breanna Stewart led the Liberty with points rebounds and seven assists and Sabrina Ionescu added points and nine assists in the - win over the Fever on Wednesday night The Liberty controlled majority of the meeting as Clark was ruled out just before tip-off with a groin injury marking her third absence of the season due to injury CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS Look we ve faced adversity There s no doubt about it But we ve also grown through it and we ve talked about it from day one no matter what keeps coming at us and every unit in the league has faced selected sort of adversity Fever head coach Stephanie White mentioned after the encounter We ve got to stop talking about building consistency and we ve got to start doing it We ve got to understand that every single day we re going to see opponents' best shots and we ve got to be ready for it And then we ve got to find I think several sort of dog in us right We play hard and at times we can be disruptive and be really good on the defensive end and at the end of the day that s got to be consistent for us White commented the association is looking for a reset heading into the WNBA All-Star break which will be hosted by Indiana beginning on Friday Clark is due to compete in the -point contest alongside Ionescu and was named a captain in Saturday s All-Star Encounter FEVER COACH SAYS CAITLIN CLARK'S ALL-STAR CHALLENGE APPEARANCE UP IN THE AIR AS ORGANIZATION FOCUSES ON 'LONG-TERM' HEALTHBut her latest setback has raised questions about Clark s availability for the weekend No discussion yet about this weekend White notified reporters before the meeting There was imaging done and obviously we're ruling her out for tonight but there hasn't been any discussion beyond tonight Clark is dealing with her second groin injury of the year White disclosed she does not believe that Clark s latest injury which was sustained in the final minutes of Tuesday night s win over the Connecticut Sun is the same as her previous injury Clark has also missed five games early into the season because of a quad injury I'm not really sure that it's a re-injury as much as a different kind of injury I know oftentimes when you're working with injuries in the groin and the quad and the hamstring and all of those things there's just they're all kind of tied together and it's not unfailingly just one thing The Fever dropped to - in games without Clark after Wednesday night's loss Kelsey Mitchell led Indiana with points The Fever will return from the All-Star break on Tuesday where they will face the Liberty in Brooklyn again The Associated Press contributed to this overview Follow Fox News Digital s sports coverage on X and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter