RandBall: Everyone was wrong about the Lynx except the people who mattered most

A season of unexpected success, which is always the best kind, is not over yet for the Lynx. But if any one game embodied what has happened so far for the 30-9 Lynx, it was Tuesday’s triumph at Connecticut.

In a tense game with playoff seeding on the line, the lead changed hands four times in the final seconds. It changed for good when Bridget Carleton stepped into a three-pointer from deep, so far back that there was some discussion about its actual distance after it went in to give the Lynx the 78-76 victory.

That one of the league’s most improved players showed no hesitation in taking such a shot, and that it went in cleanly for the league’s best three-point shooting team, and that it locked up the No. 2 seed and home court advantage for at least two rounds of the playoffs — potentially for a second-round rematch against Connecticut — combined to make it a very fitting moment.

It was the sort of win that marks a great team.

And this is a team nobody expected to be great — with the possible exception of the Lynx themselves, as I talked about on Wednesday’s Daily Delivery podcast.

Examples of how the Lynx were underestimated, often by a lot, this season:

If you wanted to wager on how many games the Lynx would win before the year started, the number offered by BetMGM was 16.5. Pick the over or the under, in a 40-game season.

They Lynx cruised to 17 wins barely halfway into the season and are close to doubling their over-under number with one game left in the regular season.

if you read preseason predictions, you typically saw the Lynx in that fragile playoff bubble territory, even in a league that lets eight of its 12 teams into the postseason. Respected WNBA writer Michael Voepel at ESPN had the Lynx ninth in a preseason power ranking, concluding by saying: “If everything comes together, the Lynx could make the playoffs again.”

Minnesota Star Tribune WNBA writer Kent Youngblood was higher on the Lynx than most, perhaps persuaded by the confidence he was hearing from the team. I remember him telling me on a preseason podcast that the Lynx very well could contend for a top-four seed. I was incredulous, and I was wrong, too.

“Oftentimes, what you do in training camp shows itself in the regular season, good or bad or ugly,” Lynx coach and president of basketball operations Cheryl Reeve said before the year started. “The good we’ve seen is a reason for optimism.”

It sure was, and it’s not over yet.

Here are four more things to know today: