🏀 The Indiana Fever head into the WNBA season with high expectations — and a real opportunity

My Week in Sport(s) 🏀 ⚽️ ⚾️ 🏏 🏉

May 16, 2025

Welcome to My Week in Sport(s) — a regular newsletter from Plot the Ball.

Covered in this edition: 🏀 the Indiana Fever, ⚽️ Hansi Flick, ⚾️ Roki Sasaki, 🏏 Zak Crawley and 🏉 Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu.

🏀 The Indiana Fever head into the WNBA season with high expectations — and a real opportunity

It took a little while for college basketball superstar Caitlin Clark to adjust to the WNBA last season. It also took a while for the Indiana Fever — who landed Clark in the 2024 draft — to adjust to their new franchise cornerstone.

The point guard was actually the Fever’s second consecutive first-overall pick. Aliyah Boston — whose strengths lie closer to the basket than Clark’s do — preceded her in 2023. Boston was drafted when the team were at a relative low point; Indiana had recorded an average margin of -11.1 points per game over their previous 40 games. Things had steadily improved by the end of Boston’s first season, though: their average margin sat at -4.1 points, and they were no longer the league’s worst team.

You might have expected the addition of a budding star like Clark to supercharge the pace of the Fever’s improvement, but that wasn’t at all how things panned out last season. The team’s playing style had to be re-oriented around such a ball-dominant player, and their performance got worse again before it got better. On a 40-game rolling basis, their average scoring margin dipped as low as -7.5 points per game in the first half of the season — over three points lower than where they began 2024.

By the end of last season, the franchise had resumed their clear upward trajectory — but it took a bit of work. Can they stay on trend when the 2025 season tips off this weekend? After a long period of rest and recovery, the expectation is that Clark will take a sophomore leap — and that the team will challenge for a championship. With a number of new faces on their roster — as well as a new head coach, Stephanie White — they will need to build cohesion as the season develops in order to reach that goal.

But they’re actually starting the year in a better place than many other franchises in the top tier of the league. Players who played 60% of the Fever’s regular-season minutes in 2024 are still on their roster in 2025; this is the third-highest figure among the eight teams that qualified for last year’s playoffs. (Only the Liberty and Lynx have a higher share.) After an offseason of upheaval, the WNBA is in transition — and there’s a real chance for Clark and the Fever to take a decisive step forward.

⚽️ No one in football is as comfortable with chaos as Barcelona coach Hansi Flick

It’s been a wild few weeks for Barcelona fans. After a run of 10 high-stakes fixtures in 33 days, their men’s team is no longer alive in the Champions League — but they’ve just secured another La Liga title. It’s Hansi Flick’s first — in his first year at the club.

The German coach has already had quite an impact on Barça’s style of play, as well as their performance level. Last May, I compared Xabi Alonso’s unbeaten Leverkusen side to other winners of Europe’s ‘Big Five’ men’s leagues since 2017-18 — the era for which the website FBref has advanced data. With an updated version of the same dataset, we can see the action-maximising approach that Flick’s teams take to the game — one that has been consistent at all of the stops in his coaching career to date.

After Sunday’s Clásico, an average Barça league game this season had featured shots worth 3.6 total expected goals. Aside from Flick’s Bayern teams, few other elite clubs in recent years have allowed for such a rate of chances to be created at either end in their matches. Alonso’s Leverkusen certainly didn’t: their rate of 3.1 total xG per game is the lowest of any Bundesliga winner in this era. With the Spaniard set to be in Real Madrid’s dugout next season, the tactical battle in La Liga could be fascinating.

What else I learned last week

⚾️ After eight MLB starts, Roki Sasaki’s upside remains a mystery

The first act of Roki Sasaki’s career in North American baseball is over; the Dodgers placed their Japanese pitcher on the injured list with a shoulder issue on Tuesday. After flashing magic in spring training, the 23-year-old has underwhelmed experts.

The injury and the team’s comments on it certainly add important context to Sasaki’s continued inability to sustain the velocity of his fastball. This staple pitch tends to follow a path out of the hand that is easy to predict; if it’s not thrown at high speed, it will be fodder for major-league hitters. In his first MLB start against the Cubs, Sasaki’s median fastball velocity was 97.9 mph; by his most recent outing against the Diamondbacks, though, that figure had fallen off more than 3 mph to just 94.7.

🏏 The highs of Zak Crawley’s test career so far don’t outweigh the lows

When 27-year-old England batter Zak Crawley arrived in international cricket, his domestic track record was the subject of much discussion. Five years on, the idea that his performance would improve as he stepped up a level looks pretty misguided.

Over his 53 tests, he has averaged 4.3 fewer runs per dismissal than the other players batting in the top three in those games. This is comfortably the lowest figure of any player with at least 50 innings to their name in the WTC era; the second-worst top-order batter in relative terms has recorded a mark of -1.8 runs. Next week, he will probably get another chance to cash in against Zimbabwe; at this point, though, it looks unlikely that Crawley’s bat will ever provide England with consistent returns.

🏉 South Africa’s Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu isn’t your typical fly-half

There aren’t many athletes who’ve made me audibly gasp as often as 23-year-old fly-half Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu over the last few months. Since March, he has had a clear run as his franchise’s first-choice 10 — and the highlights have followed.

He doesn’t play the position in conventional fashion, though. For one, he turns the ball over a lot more than his peers: the 10s he’s started opposite for club and country in the last year have conceded a turnover once every 20 touches; the Springbok has averaged one every 10.1 completed carries, passes and kicks. He’s also much more likely to run the ball himself rather than distributing it: over this period, he’s made 8.5 passes and 10.2 carries per 80 minutes; opposing 10s average 16 and 7 respectively.