As the Lynx kept stacking wins after the Olympic break, Napheesa Collier kept piling up the stats.
Quiet scoring night from Napheesa Collier doesn’t stop Lynx from thumping Phoenix
Napheesa Collier scored a modest 12 points, but the Lynx won their seventh in a row, a season high, and Minnesota moved past Connecticut into second place in the WNBA standings.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
August 29, 2024 at 5:41AM
Scoring, shooting, rebounding, dominating.
Which brings us to Minnesota’s 89-76 victory Wednesday night at Phoenix, the start of a 10-game stretch to end the season, seven of which will come on the road. The Lynx won their seventh straight game, the team’s longest regular-season winning streak in three years. The Lynx (23-8) moved past Connecticut into second place in the WNBA, 2½ games behind New York.
And they did it on a night when Collier was … OK: She played strong defense and had eight rebounds and five assists. The forward scored a relatively modest 12 points on 5-for-13 shooting.
But it didn’t matter.
The Lynx got 19 points from Kayla McBride. Ten of those came in the third quarter, when the Lynx turned a nine-point halftime lead into a runaway. The Lynx led by 23 points at one juncture and by 22 early in the fourth before the Mercury (16-16) made the final score a little more respectable.
Minnesota started both halves strong. McBride finished with five rebounds and three assists to go with those 19 points. Courtney Williams had 16 points and five assists. Myisha Hines-Allen (11 points and five rebounds) led a bench that scored 27 points.
“Road wins are what we talk about,” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said on a video call. Before the game, noting all the travel the Lynx will do down the stretch run, Reeve said the team had to approach each game as if the playoffs had already started.
That’s the way the team played Wednesday.
“It was a great test, a great challenge,’’ Reeve said. “Can we be tough enough to win on the road?’’
This time, yes. Bridget Carleton — whose defense helped hold Mercury star Kahleah Copper to 13 points on 3-for-10 shooting — had six points in the first quarter, McBride added five and the Lynx had eight players score in the opening quarter, which ended with the Lynx up 10 thanks to 18 points off 10 Mercury turnovers. Then McBride and Collier combined for 15 points in the third, which started with a 15-4 run that had the Lynx in control.
Nine Lynx players scored and six had multiple assists on a night when the Lynx had assists on 25 of 33 made field goals. The team was 11-for-26 on three-point tries.
But here might be the best numbers: The Lynx held Phoenix under 40% shooting from the field overall and to 7-for-23 shooting on three-pointers.
“We were engaged on the defensive end,’’ McBride said. “Getting deflections. It felt good. When we’re at or best, it’s our aggression at the point of the ball. When we’re engaged on the defensive end, things usually go well for us.’’
They certainly did in the third. By the time Williams hit a 20-footer with 2:10 left in the quarter, the Lynx, on a 23-9 run, were up 23.
Diana Taurasi scored 16 points for Phoenix, as did Sophie Cunningham, off the bench, before she was ejected late after picking up her second technical foul.
Unofficially, the Lynx won seven straight games earlier this season. But one of those victories came in the Commissioner’s Cup game against New York in a game that doesn’t count in the standings.
The last time Minnesota won seven straight was an eight-game winning streak that ran from mid-July into August of 2021.
“It feels good,’’ McBride said. “But we’re playing for something way bigger than just a winning streak. We wanted to hit the ground running for our Olympians who were coming back. It’s the willingness to be ready to play every night. We’re playing for each other.’’
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