PHOENIX -- The Phoenix Mercury and Indiana Fever are getting chippy.

The two teams are meeting for the first time this season at Footprint Center, and it includes the first meeting between Mercury guard Diana Taurasi and Caitlin Clark -- two players who are notoriously competitive.

Clark already has three technical fouls this season (all of which were picked up in the first nine games). Taurasi, who has gotten three one-game suspensions for getting too many technical in one season, has four so far.

The time, though, the chippiness wasn't from them.

Mercury center Brittney Griner first picked up a technical foul for shoving Fever center Aliyah Boston while they were fighting for positioning on a rebound.

Just minutes later, the two teams were huddling up close to each other under the basket after a foul. The Fever huddle accidentally ran into the Mercury huddle, and multiple players started shoving. Officials had to break up the two groups.

After review, the Fever's Temi Fagbenle and Erica Wheeler, as well as the Mercury's Kahleah Copper and Natasha Cloud, were called for offsetting technical fouls.

With 45 seconds left in the first half, too, Fever forward NaLyssa Smith was called for a flagrant 1 foul on Diana Taurasi for hitting her in the sternum.

That made it five technicals and one flagrant in less than one half of play. And none of them were issued to Taurasi or Clark.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Mercury-Fever getting chippy with five technicals in first half