u/heyheathhowstheweath

The Aces lost tonight, which means we officially hold third place until something changes. We have a harder schedule than the Aces (they have *zero* more games against playoff teams; we have five), but we're on a good path.

If we win out (unlikely, but a girl can dream!), we control our destiny for up to 3rd place, so if we win all 8, we will be in 3rd or better. See the attached screenshot, though it hasn't updated with the Aces loss / Dream win tonight.

A few announcers have mentioned that the Fever have one of the easiest remaining schedules, but this screenshot from Tankathon summarizes the remaining schedule for each team pretty well, and it's clear Indiana does *not* have an easy remaining schedule: Two games apiece against Lynx, Liberty, and Wings, plus one against the Dream and one against the Mystics, and only four games against the lottery teams.

Obviously in a small league like this one, anything can happen on a given night, so we could easily lose to a lottery team or win big against the other playoff teams (though our record is spotty against teams above .500).

The second screenshot shows the probability of winning each playoff spot. It would be so great to stay in the top 4 and win home court for the first round, and it would be the steady growth we'd hope to see--6th seed the past two years, but swept in 2024 and a deep, respectable run in 2025.

Anyway, all of this is too speculative with too many games left to think about, but the third screenshot shows how the probabilities change depending on our record for these final 12 games. We'll clinch playoffs with 6 wins (or sooner, depending on how well/poorly other teams do), and 9 wins would put us in a really strong position to snag home court in the first round.

Let's go Fever! (also hopefully no one goes too hard at FIBA... We don't need any injuries!)