Lexie Hull led the Indiana Fever to the brink of the WNBA Finals last season. 

She did it without Caitlin Clark on the floor after the superstar was injured.

Now, with Clark returning in 2026, Hull believes and expects they can win a championship and promote the game for the next generation of fans and aspiring players.

“Seeing girls, seeing boys show up every day and being able to give them aspirations and show them what they can do and show them the possibilities,” Hull told Fox News Digital of the rewards of playing in the WNBA.

“Growing up, I didn’t necessarily watch the WNBA as much, didn’t have dreams of playing in the league at a young age. And now girls have the ability to watch us, see us, dream about being professional athletes. And that’s what’s been the most rewarding part about it.

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“I love the game, and I love when [the fans] show up. And that’s part of the reason why I love doing what I do, is to see fans in the stands, see little girls and being able to be a role model for them on and off the court. I think that’s really what drives me and fuels me.”

Hull, who was drafted by the Fever in 2022, played her first two WNBA seasons without the massive spotlight that Clark brought in 2024.

They got the Fever to the playoffs together for the first time since 2016 that year before Hull led the team on a playoff run while Clark and teammate Sophie Cunningham were on the bench with injuries in 2026.

In a career-best year in 2025, Hull averaged career highs in points (7.2), rebounds (4.3) and assists (1.8) while shooting 36.7% from 3-point range and appearing in all 44 games.

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In the playoffs, she averaged 10.3 points, five rebounds and two assists in eight games. It all came to an end in a 107-98 overtime loss to the Las Vegas Aces in Game 5 of the WNBA semifinals.

But Hull says she believes the 2026 team, in year three of the Clark era, will be a different show and one that is gunning for the title.

“I think it’s because we made it where we made it last year without some of our key pieces, and with a lot of injuries, and a lot of, like, this adversity. … Our bench was longer than every other bench. We had more people in the training room getting treatment than any other team, and we still almost made it to the Finals,” Hull said.

“Tasting that and being so close and feeling like we have so much more to give, I think that just changes our mindset a little bit. And it’s not necessarily overconfident, but confident in the fact that we really do have a chance. And we should be playing like every game matters, and we’re preparing for that last one.

“I think it’s very achievable with what we’re going to be able to do with free agency.”

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Kylie Jenner is partying in a sports bra and a face mask as she prepares for Coachella.

On Monday morning, Jenner took to Instagram and shared a video with friends Anastasia “Stassie” Karanikolaou and Victoria Villarroel. 

The trio wore pink face masks as they danced to Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.”

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The 28-year-old was wearing yoga pants with one leg rolled up and a shirt with Justin Bieber’s face half on. 

“its just not clocking to you,” Jenner captioned her post, referring to the viral video of Bieber confronting paparazzi.

Prior to the dancing video, Jenner shared a picture of herself in the same outfit, holding an iced coffee and several bags. 

“chelly day 1!!!!!” she captioned the post.

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Jenner also shared a photo with Karanikolaou in a home gym. She held a water bottle and posed for the photo while Karanikolaou wore a bikini top and shorts.

Jenner is not the only star in the desert preparing for the weekend ahead.

Influencer Alix Earle shared a picture of herself in a black bikini top and white pants, sitting in the backyard of the Reale Actives house at Coachella.

Hailey Bieber‘s friend Fai Khadra shared a video of Hailey and Justine Skye in a blue golf cart. 

“The First Lady of Coachella,” Khadra captioned the video and tagged Hailey.

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Hailey’s husband is headlining Coachella for the first time Saturday night. Fans have coined this year’s Coachella “Bieberchella.”

Sabrina Carpenter is headlining Friday night. Ahead of her big performance, the star shared a picture of two pups on her Instagram story wearing “Sabchella” neck bands.

With Iran increasingly isolated among its Gulf neighbors, recent reports say Tehran has been deepening its ties in the South Caucasus with the Republic of Georgia.

The former Soviet republic, which was until recently seen as an aspiring European Union and potential NATO member candidate, has slowly moved closer to Tehran.

“Iran has built a vast influence infrastructure in Georgia, which includes entities sanctioned by the U.S. government for links to extremism and viewed in Washington as fronts for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),” Giorgi Kandelaki, former member of the Georgian Parliament, told Fox News Digital. 

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Kandelaki, co-author of a recent report with the Hudson Institute titled Georgia’s Iranian Turn: Tehran’s Rapid Expansion of Influence in a Once-Committed U.S. Ally, said that Tbilisi’s turn toward Iran is bad for Georgians but also bad for U.S. interests in the region.

“Georgia has an overwhelmingly pro-U.S. public opinion committed to Western values with it also being viewed as a traditional U.S. ally in Washington. This reality presents a terrible precedent and reversing this trajectory is in the interest of both the U.S. but also Georgian society,” he added.

While Georgia has remained diplomatically neutral, the Hudson report details the budding ties between the two countries and how Iran uses Georgia as a network for intelligence infrastructure, penetrating Georgia’s religious, educational and cultural institutions to impact society.

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As far back as 2007, Iran opened the Georgian branch of Al-Mustafa University, which is considered one of Iran’s main arms for the dissemination of Islamic Republic founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s ideology abroad, according to United Against a Nuclear Iran.

The U.S. Treasury Department stated in 2020 that Iran’s IRGC-Quds Force uses Al-Mustafa University in Georgia as an international recruitment network for Iran and acts as a conduit for the Islamic Republic’s ideological and security interests.

“Al-Mustafa has facilitated unwitting tourists from Western countries to come to Iran, from whom IRGC-Qud’s Force members sought to collect intelligence,” the Treasury Department said. It also said that the university facilitated student exchanges with foreign universities to develop intelligence sources.

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A report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies estimated the university’s annual budget is $100 million and has trained tens of thousands of emissaries across the world who spread Iran’s revolutionary ideology.

Iran has utilized sympathetic Georgians to commit international crimes to advance its domestic agenda.

While no links have ever been made with the Tbilisi government, a Georgian national, Agil Aslanov, who had ties to organized crime, was reportedly recruited by the Quds Forces to assassinate a prominent Jewish leader in Azerbaijan in 2022. In another case in 2025, Georgian national Polad Omarov was indicted in federal court in New York City and sentenced to 25 years in prison for attempting to assassinate prominent Iranian activist Masih Alinejad, a vocal critic of the Islamic Republic’s use of violence against peaceful protesters.

Georgia once made significant inroads to foster political and security ties with the United States following the Rose Revolution in 2003, becoming a bedrock of regional security in the Black Sea region. After decades of Soviet rule, Georgia aligned itself with the United States, contributing to missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and eventually signed a Strategic Partnership Charter with the United States in 2009.

Tbilisi’s ties with Tehran have been expanded under the pro-Russia Georgian Dream party that took power in 2012. That bond, according to analysts, has tightened after Georgia’s pro-Western President Salome Zourabichvili finished her six-year term in office in 2024 and was replaced by Mikheil Kavelashvili, who was chosen as her successor by a newly established electoral college reportedly dominated by Georgian Dream supporters.

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Kavelashvili’s installment followed parliamentary elections in Oct. 2024 marred by some irregularities, according to the U.S. embassy in Tbilisi, in which the Georgian Dream declared victory. 

Leadership ties between both countries have steadily grown since the Georgian Dream’s disputed 2024 parliamentary victory.

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze visited Iran in May 2024 for the funeral of Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter accident, and again in July to attend the inauguration of Iran’s current president, Masoud Pezeshkian, where Iranian news agencies reported both leaders praised the growing relationship between the two countries.

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Many Georgian companies are also importing oil and petroleum products from Iran, a key economic lifeline for the regime and its regional war efforts, according to Georgian NGO Civic IDEA. In 2024, Iranian oil export revenue was approximately $43 billion, which accounts for roughly 57% of Iran’s total export revenue.

According to Civic IDEA, between 2022 and 2025, 72 companies registered in Georgia imported Iranian oil and petroleum, including eight inked to donors of the ruling Georgian Dream party, boosting Iran’s revenue stream even while heavily sanctioned by Western nations.

“Georgia has become Iran’s primary sanctions-evasion hub . . . funneling hard currency back to Tehran’s war machine and the IRGC through specific schemes in oil imports,” Nicholas Chkhaidze, national security and strategic communications analyst based in Tbilisi, told Fox News Digital.

Chkhaidze said these Georgian companies that import Iranian oil pay in cash and can bypass international banking sanctions. 

“The scale is massive, as Tehran uses the revenue from these schemes to fund its regional operations,” Chkhaidze claimed.

Telephone and email requests for comment sent to the government of Georgia were not returned. A spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations would not comment on the relations between the two countries.