INDIANAPOLIS — The sweat stood out on Grace Berger’s forehead as she dribbled a basketball hard with her right hand. Then she switched to her left hand.

It was about an hour before the Indiana Fever was scheduled to take on the Washington Mystics in a mid-July WNBA game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse and fans were starting to trickle in and fill the arena that has been routinely sold out for most Fever home games this 2024 season.

The bad news for the fans, and for Berger, is if they wanted to see the 6-foot guard from Louisville do anything on the court besides sit on the bench in a warm-up jacket they had better watch right then and there.

Anyone who followed Berger’s playing career in college at Indiana University – and many Fever supporters did and give her extra cheers when she gets into games – saw a versatile player who could score, pass and rebound, was unselfish with the ball and led the Hoosiers vocally and physically. Some of those fans even wear Berger No. 34 jerseys instead of Caitlin Clark No. 22s.

Growing up, Berger began driving with her dad from their Louisville home to Indianapolis to watch the Fever play when she was in elementary school. Later, she became a multi-time, first-team All-Big Ten honors selection who not only notched good numbers statistically, but who led IU in intangibles. During the 2021-22 season, Berger averaged 16.2 points, 6.2 rebounds and 4.7 assists a game.

Her last season in Bloomington, Berger suffered an injury and played in only 24 games, but still was a difference-maker as the Hoosiers kept putting together 20-plus-win seasons and appearances in the NCAA playoffs.

The Fever not only had the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft, which it used on center Aliyah Boston, but also spent the No. 7 first-round pick on Berger.

Berger’s pro career began slowly. She got into games mostly when they were decided. As the season wore on, however, she earned more and more PT and towards the end of the season that ended with a 13-27 mark, Berger was often used as the first player off the bench. She averaged 4.2 points per game in 14 ½-minutes and showed promise.

Even with the addition of No. 1 overall pick Clark this season, who would become a minutes-eater in the lineup, Berger figured to contribute. That’s the way the season started, then Berger fell out of the rotation and then she vanished from the lineup altogether.

At the Olympic break, the Fever’s record is 11-15. Of the 26 games, Berger has played in just eight of them, averaging 3.6 ppg. She is so far down the bench she probably isn’t even in coach Christie Sides’ peripheral vision.

Unlike most players in the modern W, Berger is not a three-point specialist. She is the queen of the mid-range, shooting jumpers for two points at a time, practically a lost art. But maybe that is hurting Berger’s chances for more time.

A high school star at Sacred Heart Academy in Louisville, and where she was named the Louisville Courier-Journal’s Athlete of the Year, followed by her stint at IU, Berger is not used to sitting and watching basketball games pass her by. She is more used to influencing their results.

Being 10th, 11th or 12th player to be called on – and explaining in her mind how she plummeted — is not something Berger wanted to try and explain. Her only analysis was – “Everybody in the WNBA is really good.”

Berger said her only solution is “to just keep working hard.” That means in practice, whenever an opportunity pops up to play in a game, or even in drills.

All of professional sports is a narrowing funnel, often humbling for players who were stars in high school, stars in college, and then finding out there are others like them. They must scrap and hustle to get a chance at the top, must do that to retain a spot on a roster of just 12 players in a league with just 12 teams.

When Berger said everyone in the WNBA is good at what they do, it was a truism. Those are basically the 144 best players in the world. It is the law of the jungle to survive on a team with everyone trying to show who is good enough to star, to start, to play at all.

The Fever is a maturing team building for the future with a core of young players. Berger is a second-year player, just 25, who can be part of that future. The team has shown flashes of what it can be when it jells on offense and shown flashes of glaring deficiencies when committing too many turnovers.

Indiana began the season sloppy and slow, but has shown improvement and inched towards a .500 record entering a week-long vacation (Berger said she was going home to Louisville) while the Olympics play out in Paris and before focusing fresh energy on practicing for the rest of the season.

“A lot of teams go through ups and downs,” Berger said of how the Fever has performed.

The college statistics tell only part of the story, but Berger also passed the eye test on the court with those intangibles. Her presence made teammates better.

“I think that’s the best part of my game,” Berger said.

She can only hope the Fever notices that during the season’s home stretch.