Stephanie White is home after being named the new coach of the Indiana Fever. That was the prevailing theme of her introductory news conference Monday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
“This is coming home for me,” said White, flanked by new general manager Amber Cox and team president Kelly Krauskopf on the dais. “It’s been part of my DNA since Day 1.”
White is an Indiana native, named 1995’s Indiana Miss Basketball while playing at Seeger High School in West Lebanon. She was named a high school All-American, also winning Gatorade and USA Today National Player of the Year honors as a senior. As a collegian at Purdue, she won the 1999 NCAA national championship. And as a professional, she played four of her five WNBA seasons with the Fever.
She also has a history with the organization as a coach, serving as an assistant for four seasons under Lin Dunn before a two-season stint as Fever head coach from 2015-16.
Though Monday’s news conference was a welcome home for White, it was also about the future of the team she’s taking over.
“Expectations are higher, the game is different, the players are better,” White said. “We have to be forward thinking.”
The Fever finished 20–20 and made the WNBA playoffs, losing in the first round to White’s previous team, the Connecticut Sun. The Fever have two of the league’s brightest rising stars in No. 1 overall draft picks Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston.
Clark averaged 19.2 points, 8.4 assists and 5.7 rebounds in a season that eventually earned her WNBA Rookie of the Year honors. Boston scored 14 points and grabbed 8.9 rebounds per game in her second season. White called them “the bookends you want to build around” as a point guard and center, making a comparison to legendary Utah Jazz stars John Stockton and Karl Malone.
That duo, along with Lexie Hull, provides White with a strong core to build around and improve.
“Offensively, we can be more creative,” she said. “We can utilize more versatility, use players in different ways. It’s a high-IQ team with the freedom to make plays.”
However, White also emphasized the team has to get better defensively.
White pointed to the Fever making the playoffs as providing valuable experience for the team’s young players.
“There’s never a substitute for experience,” she said. “This is a young roster that gained valuable experience through the course of the season.”
Krauskopf said her team-building process as an executive is to establish a young core, then build around it with veterans. She said the team will be active in the free agent market and look toward the Dec. 6 WNBA expansion draft for the Golden State Valkyries as an opportunity to make moves to improve.
“That’s what I love doing. Finding ways to add another player to add to our roster to make an impact,” said Krauskopf.
