Kelsey Mitchell Sets WNBA Scoring Record as Fever Defeat Tempo
TORONTO — The record fell on a shot she’s hit thousands of times, but rarely with this much weight.
Kelsey Mitchell rose up on the right wing in the third quarter, flicked her wrist, and buried a 3-pointer that rewrote the WNBA record book. With that jumper, she moved past A’ja Wilson’s 1,021 points from 2024 and stamped her name on the single-season scoring mark.
By the final buzzer, Mitchell had 33 points, the new standard set at 1,034, and the Indiana Fever had a 103-85 win over the Toronto Tempo on Friday night — their eighth victory in the last 10 games.
Mitchell’s Historic Night
Mitchell didn’t just edge past the record. She tore through it.
She shot 12-for-17 from the field, including a blistering 7-for-11 from beyond the arc, carving up Toronto’s defense with the calm of a player who has seen every coverage and beaten most of them. Her 33 points continued a remarkable streak: 25 consecutive games with at least 20 points, extending her own WNBA record.
Every time Toronto threatened a run, Mitchell answered. A pull-up three. A hard drive. A catch-and-shoot dagger from the corner. The kind of night where the basket seems wider, the game slower, the record inevitable.
Clark Returns from World Stage, Controls This One Too
If Mitchell supplied the fireworks, Caitlin Clark supplied the control.
In her first game back since helping the U.S. win the women’s FIBA World Cup in Germany, Clark looked like she’d never left. She finished with 28 points and 14 assists — matching her season high in dimes — for her 14th double-double of the year.
She shot 7-for-15 from the field and 2-for-8 from deep, but the real damage came at the line. Clark went a perfect 12-for-12 on free throws, punishing every defensive misstep and keeping Indiana’s offense humming.
She had also dropped 14 assists on Toronto in a home win on June 16. Different arena, same vision. Time and again she bent the Tempo defense, drawing help and finding Mitchell, shooters on the perimeter, or cutters diving to the rim.
The World Cup break lasted nearly three weeks. Clark and Mitchell made it look like a long practice.
Tempo Slide Continues
For Toronto, the night fit a painful pattern.
Laura Juskaite led the Tempo with 22 points, showing touch from outside and fight in traffic. Kiki Rice added 18, while Isabelle Harrison and Temi Fagbenle chipped in 16 apiece, doing their best to keep the scoreboard respectable.
But the result was the same: another loss, their fifth in a row.
The expansion side opened its inaugural season with promise at 9-9. Since then, the fall has been steep — a 2-21 stretch that has stripped away the early-season optimism and laid bare the growing pains of a new franchise.
The Tempo also played short-handed. Guard Marina Mabrey, a key piece of their backcourt, has been ruled out for the final four games of the season with a right adductor injury. She hasn’t played since a home loss to Indiana on Aug. 18, and her absence again left Toronto light on shot creation and perimeter bite.
From the stands, Raptors guard Immanuel Quickley watched as the city’s newest team tried, and failed, to keep pace with one of the league’s hottest duos.
Fever Rising, Tempo Searching
Indiana’s surge has come at the right time. Eight wins in 10 games, a record-breaking scorer in Mitchell, and a floor general in Clark who already reads the league like a veteran — the Fever look less like a rebuilding project and more like a problem for anyone with playoff ambitions.
They’ll take that momentum home on Sunday, when they host Washington, with Mitchell’s scoring record now a moving target and Clark’s stat lines becoming appointment viewing.
Toronto, meanwhile, closes its home schedule on Sunday against New York. One more chance in front of their own fans to show there’s more to this rough inaugural campaign than the losses piling up on the standings.
