Napheesa Collier, Lynx win Game 3 over Sun in WNBA playoffs

UNCASVILLE, Conn. — Despite losing Game 1 of the WNBA semifinals, Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said she felt optimistic about her team’s chances to win the series. Its best player, Napheesa Collier, wasn’t efficient offensively and the Connecticut Sun shot better than 40% from 3.

Neither was likely to repeat itself throughout the series.

“There was a level of confidence after Game 1, for sure,” Reeve said. “This group, they’re going to bounce back. They always do.”

Five days later, the Lynx now hold a 2-1 series lead after winning 90-81 on the Sun’s home floor Friday night. Game 4 is Sunday here at Mohegan Sun Arena.

Collier finished with 26 points and 11 rebounds, shooting 11-for-19 from the field. She became the first player in Lynx history to produce multiple 25-point, 10-rebound performances in the playoffs.

After a record-setting series against the Phoenix Mercury in which she scored 80 points in two games, the Sun were able to limit Collier’s production in Games 1 and 2 of the semifinals. She totaled just 28 points in the two games, including nine points on 3-for-14 shooting in Game 2.

But getting Collier going early was clearly part of the Lynx’s game plan for Friday.

“There was nobody more frustrated than Phee over the past couple games,” Reeve said.

Collier got on the board on the Lynx’s third possession, then hit a turnaround jumper over Alyssa Thomas a couple of possessions later. After a pump-fake layup and a turnaround jumper, she had eight points in the first six minutes.

Collier shot 4-for-14 with Thomas her primary defender in Games 1 and 2; she went 5-for-5 against Thomas in the first half Friday. It set the tone for the Lynx’s offense.

“Just taking my time and knowing I put in the work. Those are shots I normally make,” she said. “Everyone has an off night. I tried to contribute in other ways to help the team. And I know they’re going to fall. They’re shots I take 1,000 times … It’s the law of averages. Sometimes you have an off night. But I knew I had to come in — it’s the playoffs. You have to play with an aggressive mindset, not remembering what happened the game before, but staying in the present moment.”

The Sun didn’t have an answer for the Lynx’s pick-and-roll offense involving Collier and Courtney Williams. They tried to aggressively hedge, they tried to trap and get the ball out of Williams’ hands, they tried to switch — and none of it worked. Minnesota went 5-for-5 from the floor in the first half when the Sun tried to blitz Williams with two defenders, according to ESPN Research. 

When momentum started swinging toward Connecticut or the Lynx desperately needed a basket, they simply went right back to their ball-screen offense.

After a deep 3 by DeWanna Bonner cut the Lynx lead to three early in the second quarter, Collier and Williams came back into the game and immediately ran ball screens on consecutive possessions. The first one resulted in a left-handed layup by Collier and the second ended with Collier kicking it out to Kayla McBride in the corner for a 3-pointer while getting fouled to push the lead back to nine.

After the Sun crept back within nine in the fourth quarter, Williams again found Collier rolling to the basket to extend the lead. With under three minutes left, Collier came up and set a screen for Williams, then the Sun switched and ended up with a smaller defender on Collier — who received the ball in the paint and finished to push the gap back to 10 points.

“They’re making adjustments, and I think we’re prepared for their adjustments,” Williams said. “Obviously we know they’re going to go back to the drawing board and make more adjustments. And we’re going to do that as well. I think just trusting what it is that we do. Trusting my teammates, knowing that if I am getting trapped, I can let it go. They are hard hedging, they’re going under, but we have a way of knowing how to trust each other and be able to make an adjustment whenever they throw different things at us.”

Connecticut, which had the league’s best defense in the regular season — based on defensive efficiency and points per game — got picked apart like very few teams had done to it in the regular season. Minnesota shot better than 59% in the first half; according to ESPN Research, that was the second-best shooting performance by any team against the Sun in a first half this season.

Opponents shot just 43.1% against the Sun during the regular season, but Minnesota shot better than 57% for the game. It was also only the second time all season a team scored 90 points in regulation against the Sun.

“They’re a good team, they spread the floor, they’re really balanced, but I felt like it was more us,” Sun coach Stephanie White said. “I felt like we were soft, no matter what we did. I felt like we kind of let them go where they wanted to go. We didn’t give a whole lot of resistance. We let them move the ball around the perimeter really easily. There’s got to be a mentality of being disruptive.”

Meanwhile, Sun top scorer  Marina Mabrey struggled to get in a rhythm. After averaging 17.5 points through two games in the series, she shot 6-for-20 (1-for-11 from 3) as the Lynx made it a point to limit her space on the catch. Bridget Carleton and McBride rarely let Mabrey get an opening, and when she did, her shots weren’t falling. She missed all six of her open 3-point attempts after going 8-for-12 on clean looks in the first two games.

“I thought we were OK on Mabrey,” Reeve said. “She’s a shotmaker. I thought she had some shots she just didn’t make. I’m not trying to give her those same opportunities in our next game … I didn’t think it was necessarily anything that we did.”

One promising sign for the Sun was the play of Brionna Jones, who was a complete nonfactor in the first two games of the series and sat the entire fourth quarter of Game 2. She had nine points in the first half Friday and then scored another four early in the third quarter, while also contributing four assists in the opening 25 minutes. Jones finished the regular season with 17 or more points in seven of the team’s last nine games but was averaging just 5.0 points through four playoff games. Friday’s performance appeared to be a return to her September form.

“I think it was just my mentality coming into this game. I know I haven’t shown up the last two games offensively,” Jones said. “My teammates found me and made my looks easy.”

Unfortunately for the Sun, she picked up her fourth foul on an illegal screen with 4:22 left in the third quarter after they had turned the momentum of the game. Minnesota responded with a 11-5 run to give itself some breathing room entering the final period.

Bonner also had 16 points for the Sun and moved past Candace Parker (1,149) into second place on the WNBA’s career playoff scoring list. Bonner now has 1,159 points, trailing only Diana Taurasi (1,455). 

With the win, Minnesota moved one step closer to a return to the WNBA Finals, a stage the Lynx reached in six of seven seasons from 2011 to 2017, resulting in four championships. But they haven’t been back to the Finals since that last title in 2017.

After being projected as a borderline playoff team in the preseason, they’re now just 40 minutes away from a chance at the championship.

“You keep underestimating us and we keep just doing what we’re doing,” Collier said. “We come in and hit teams in the face. We’ve proved who we are all season and we have so much belief in ourselves. We know what we’re capable of and that’s what we’re trying to go out and show every night.”