We have arrived at the final day of August, and we were going to take the day off since it is Labor Day weekend, and who wants to work? Well, we decided on a Sunday Surmising piece nonetheless, and no, it has nothing to do with baseball today, although there are only four weeks left in the MLB regular season. Also, we’re not going to be doing much on present-day college football, even though it got going yesterday.

Instead, we’re checking in with the WNBA—that pro sports league that sexists like to diss and that racists love to watch only for Caitlin Clark (and that is not her fault). Well, the Indiana Fever take on the Golden State Valkyries tonight in San Francisco, with playoff seeding on the line. The two teams are competing with the Seattle Storm for the sixth-through-eighth slots in the postseason tournament, and time is short.

The Fever (21-18) are basically tied with the Storm (22-19) for sixth, while the Valkyries (20-18) lurk a half game behind the duo. After Golden State’s Saturday home romp over the Washington Mystics by a 99-62 margin, the only other team left in the playoff hunt is the Los Angeles Sparks (17-20), who have lost two games in a row to fall 2.5 games behind the Valkyries. Thus, tonight’s game really is about positioning.

Clark is out until at least September 7, and Golden State already has beaten Indiana twice this season, so the Valkyries will hold the tiebreak on the Fever if the two teams end up tied. The visitors are favored mathematically in San Francisco tonight, despite Golden State’s 11-7 home record and Indiana’s 10-9 road mark. The Valkyries actually have five home games in an eight-day stretch here before closing elsewhere.

All that being said, the odds are clearly in Golden State’s favor to make the postseason now, with that 2.5-game edge on the Sparks with just six games to go. A win over the Fever could be the difference, though, between the six seed and the eight seed when all the dust settles at the end of the regular season. With the tiebreak in hand, the Valyries need all the victories they can get down the stretch here to outdo the others.

Golden State is also 2-1 against the Storm, with one more matchup to go in Seattle on September 9, the second-to-last game of the schedule. The possibilities are limitless, of course, depending how the Valkyries perform in this final home stand—in addition to how playoff qualifies above them manage their workloads coming down the stretch. With three games left combined against already-in franchises, that’s the question.

That is why we liked the team’s chances when we assessed it all last Tuesday; now, it’s right there in front of the Valkyries for the taking. We will learn a lot about the Golden State coaching staff; the mettle of the players on the roster; and the energy of the fans in the four remaining home games at Chase Center (of which we will be attending two, on September 4 and September 6). But we guess the results will be good.