Even after losing five players to season-ending injuries, including superstar guard Caitlin Clark, the Indiana Fever are officially headed to the 2025 WNBA semifinals.

In an absolute herculean feat, the six-seeded Fever stunned the three-seeded Atlanta Dream on the road in Game 3 on Thursday night to make it to the penultimate playoff level.

What the Fever accomplished is genuinely remarkable. At the start of August, some of Indiana's biggest playoff contributors weren't even on the roster. Guard Odyssey Sims, forward Aerial Powers and guard Shey Peddy all joined the team as hardship exemption players after major players like guard Aari McDonald, guard Sophie Cunningham, guard Sydney Colson, and forward Chloe Bibby went down with injuries that ended their year.

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Clark being ruled out for the rest of the season in early September after only playing in 13 games felt like the ultimate gut-punch for Indiana, a team being held together by figurative duct-tape. However, there's a reason people use duct-tape so much. Duct-tape keeps things together despite intense resistance. It's resilient.

The Fever topping a red-hot Dream team (with one of the most lethal 3-point attacks in the WNBA) with so many hardship players is a testament to the work coach Stephanie White and company have done in their first season together. Losing Clark for so long could have iced Indiana's season early since the entire game plan was always fixated on what Clark does best. However, this Fever team found a way... over and over and over and over again.

The Fever season had plenty of setbacks. Clark and Cunningham's May injuries paved the way for McDonald's paramount arrival. Marquee free-agent forward DeWanna Bonner's unexpected exit left Indiana without one of its biggest offseason additions in June. However, the team kept going, even after Clark left the lineup again in late June after a brief return, the same week as Bonner's eventual waiving after multiple games away.

Clark returned once more after that pause and then left yet again before the WNBA All-Star Break with a new injury, never to return to the lineup. However, the Fever still kept going, adding Bibby later in July. However, a hot start to August gave way to a miserable stretch where McDonald, Colson and Cunningham all went down with season-ending injuries. Bibby eventually joined them, but the team still kept going. Sims, Powers and Peddy all joined the team in emergency relief and thrived.

The Fever went from fighting for their lives to even make the playoffs in late August and early September after losing so many players, including the franchise's superstar engine in Clark, to upsetting the Dream on the road, a team some considered a legitimate title threat. Heck, the team did so without center/forward Damiris Dantas, who missed the whole playoff series with a concussion.

The bench looks unusually full for Indiana these days, as all the players who couldn't make it this far cheer on the ones who could. Elite players like guard Kelsey Mitchell and forward Aliyah Boston playing at their typical high level has coupled perfectly with veteran forward Natasha Howard and guard Lexie Hull giving high-energy play in the starting rotation. Rookie forward Makayla Timpson came off the bench and played stout defense in key moments, too, and Dantas was playing some of her best ball of the year before her concussion.

Even forward Brianna Turner, who spent most of the season on the bench, stepped up in such a pivotal way down the stretch in her stinging defense, her clutch ability to rebound and some sharp work on offense in the paint. Arguably, she was the unsung hero of the playoff series, as the team couldn't have slowed Atlanta without her.

Of course, it will only get harder for the Fever from here. Even so, that the team has even gotten this far is inexplicable and such a credit to this team's unreal cohesion through repeated catastrophe and its sterling leadership on the court and with its incredibly adaptable coaching.

The Fever might have been knocked down more than once, but they're still alive. They're still going. If they can make it this far despite everything that's gone wrong, who's to say Indiana can't go all the way?

This article originally appeared on For The Win: The Fever might be the most resilient team in sports this year

Reporting by Cory Woodroof, For The Win / For The Win

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