Caitlin Clark’s WNBA debut was a tonic to the billowing anticipation, filled with some un-Caitlin like moments.

The thing about anticipation: It builds up hope. Just like it did ahead of Caitlin Clark’s WNBA debut. The scores of fans inside Mohegan Sun Arena must have been anticipating the spectacular, something truly special, on Tuesday night. Why else buy those overpriced T-shirts that splashed Clark’s name where the moniker of her professional team should have been? And why else drive hours to a casino located on the edge of Connecticut and fill up an arena that hasn’t produced a home-opening sellout crowd in two decades?

The expectation for Clark’s first regular season game with the Indiana Fever was that high. But another thing about anticipation: There’s almost bound to be a letdown.

Clark strolled into her big moment, confident in a black halter top and beaming for the cameras ahead of her first regular season game as a professional basketball player. As the realities of being a rookie began to set in, however, Clark looked much different.

After committing her eighth turnover while still in the third quarter against the older and wiser Connecticut Sun, she no longer appeared ablaze with the embers of that familiar competitive fire. Clark lowered her head, fixed her hairband and masked any frustration behind a set of blank eyes.

Whatever the league’s network partners who endlessly hyped this game and the announced 8,910 people who showed up were expecting from Clark’s debut, they could not have anticipated this: 20 points (on 5-for-15 shooting) and 10 turnovers, a lowlight of a double-double that would make you want to burn the stat sheet.

After the Sun’s 92-71 dismantling of the Fever, Clark allowed a full hour to pass before facing the glare of the cameras again. Then during a postgame news conference, with her hair still wet from a shower, Clark sounded like an old vet, forcing a smile and speeding through her clichés.

“Just a lot to learn from, you know. It’s the first one,” she said. “There’s going to be good ones, there’s going to be bad ones and, you know, like we said in the locker room, we play on Thursday. You’ve got to learn from it and move on, and be ready to go.”

Savvy speech aside, Clark is new to all this. Only a few months ago, Clark ruled the game of basketball as a collegian. While becoming the greatest scorer in NCAA Division I history, she redefined how we view the sport. When she played with the black-and-gold Iowa across her chest, the women’s game was more watchable, and marketable, than men’s college hoops. And that excitement has followed her into the WNBA.

Several of the Fever’s road games have moved into larger venues. Those officially licensed T-shirts of Clark run at least $34.99 and draped the bodies of the largest contingent of fans inside the arena. Hours before the game, a sportsbook announced that more money had been wagered on Clark’s debut than on Game 5 of the NBA’s Eastern Conference semifinals between the New York Knicks and Indiana Pacers.

As Kelly Krauskopf, the assistant general manager for the Pacers who formerly led the Fever’s basketball operations, recently told me, she has been around the women’s game and has seen greatness before. However, Clark’s arrival welcomed something new.

“The elevation of what’s happening culturally in our American sports society is that men have decided that Caitlin Clark is good enough to talk about,” Krauskopf said.

A reporter’s gesture to Caitlin Clark was dumb. So is a lot of the anger.

So she’s swelling the attention, as well as the anticipation. But those expecting Clark to just pick up where she left off in college aren’t accounting for all of the great players she will now face in the WNBA. She’s playing against grown women who will force her to throw bad passes out of double-team traps. They’re not going to stand there and allow Clark to be the conductor of a beautiful basketball symphony as she did for Iowa, pounding the rock while probing the defense. Instead, these career women will force her into discomfort and some very un-Caitlin-like moments:

At one point in the first half, her turnover tally growing, Clark was bringing the ball up court when Sun guard DiJonai Carrington stripped her clean at half court.

Near the end of the half, Clark thought she had a driving lane, until she grew acquainted with Rachel Banham’s defense at the rim. Clark hit the court, hard, and her body instinctively curled before she got up to take two free throws.

Just before halftime, Clark had another pass intercepted, this time by 11-year veteran Alyssa Thomas, and grew irate over what she felt was a missed call. She first complained to Coach Christie Sides, then barked at a nearby official. Teammate Aliyah Boston had to redirect the rookie, latching onto Clark’s left arm and getting in her ear. To Clark’s credit, she listened.

And she returned. Though her shots began falling, the pressure of Connecticut’s defense never relented and Clark’s turnovers climbed.

“It’s going back and watching video and showing [Clark] exactly some things that we can do to help her out to relieve some of that pressure,” Sides said, explaining how the Fever can mitigate Clark’s turnovers. “She’s a rookie, you know. She’s a rookie in this league. This is the best league in the world; we’ve got to teach her. We’ve got to teach her what these games are going to look like for her every single night, and we’ve got to eliminate some of that pressure on her. That’s on me. That’s on my staff to figure out.”

A growing fan base in Indiana now awaits her home debut Thursday. Certainly, those fans will expect logo threes, dimes in transition and a glimpse of the Fever’s future. Anticipation followed Clark into this league, and it’s hard to be patient around such surging hope. The reality, however, might require them to wait.