UNCASVILLE, Conn. — Indiana Fever coach Christie Sides had a simple message to her team following an 89-72 loss to Connecticut on Monday night: You can’t coach effort.

Indiana was lackadaisical in the first half both offensively and defensively. The Sun scored a season-high 55 first-half points, while holding the Fever to 35. Connecticut got to that number through multiple easy layups, as well as stealing from a near-motionless Fever offense — including one from DiJonai Carrington as she picked rookie Caitlin Clark’s pocket and raced back to the other end of the floor to score before the buzzer.

More: WNBA's best Sun dismantle Fever, as Caitlin Clark, 3 more starters benched in blowout loss

When Carrington stole the ball, the only Fever player to make a defensive effort was Kelsey Mitchell. The other four stood and watched Carrington’s buzzer-beater, and that bucker gave Connecticut a 11-3 run to end the first half.

“You can’t, at this level, coach effort,” Sides said postgame. “I felt like we were just trying to ask them to keep playing hard… you can’t play in this league if you have to coach effort.”

With most of the starters in the game to start the second half, Connecticut went on a 12-4 run.  So, when Clark picked up her fourth foul with just under five minutes left in the third quarter, she headed to the bench to join fellow starters Mitchell, NaLyssa Smith and Kristy Wallace.

The Fever were down 28 to the Sun, currently the WNBA’s best team, and at the time, it seemed routine; starters take some time to rest before coming out for the fourth quarter. Except this time, those starters didn’t return.

“It was just like, ‘You can’t coach effort,’” Clark said of Sides’ message postgame. “This is a team you can’t come out and be lackadaisical against, they’re just that good. They’re going to punch you in the mouth, and I don’t think we had it from the jump. Obviously, that’s a little disappointing, but that’s something you can’t coach, effort is not something they can coach. They can coach X's and O's, but they can’t coach that. I thought we could’ve just played with a lot better energy.”

Clark said she and Sides didn’t have any conversations about her not playing the rest of the game. Sides didn’t have a conversation with any of the starters about them being benched; it was just in the flow of the game.

Aliyah Boston was the only starter to play more than 22 minutes, and she was joined by the Fever’s reserves, which included Katie Lou Samuelson, Erica Wheeler, Grace Berger, Lexie Hull and Celeste Taylor to play the end of the third quarter and the entire fourth.

The offense had a better flow with the mostly second-team unit — the offense ran through Boston in the post, and she finished the game with 14 points and 12 rebounds. Indiana outscored Connecticut, 17-15, in the final five minutes of the third and 16-9 in the fourth.

“The second half we did a much better job of just getting the ball from side to side,” Boston said. “We played in the post a lot more, even if it wasn’t us scoring directly, it was us getting the touch, bringing the defense uphill, getting to the next side, and we had a lot more movement than we did in the first half — I think that was one of our issues, as well.”

It was still a 17-point loss for the Fever, dropping them to 3-10 on the season. But it was better than the 28-point deficit the group inherited in the third quarter.

“It was just not to give up,” Hull said of the fourth-quarter huddle message. “I think that’s the biggest thing for us, we don’t want to come out of there saying we didn’t try. For the people that were on the court, we practice a lot together as a group, so it was just playing the game we practice and coming out and putting in as much effort as we can. With that, we can be happy with our performance as long as we tried our hardest.”

Now, the Fever are heading back to Indianapolis for a three-game homestand against Atlanta, Chicago and Washington — all teams that they’re played (and beaten) this season.

Whether they can take another victory will be up to that key metric: effort.

“I think we have a great opportunity to come out and play,” Clark said. “We play Atlanta, then we play Chicago, two games that feel like must-wins — I don’t want to say they’re must-wins, but they’re two very winnable games for this group. One of the teams we’ve, and another team we played in preseason, so they’re teams that we’re kind of familiar with.”

Follow IndyStar Fever Insider Chloe Peterson on X at @chloepeterson67.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana Fever coach benches starters, including Caitlin Clark, vs Sun