Before Thursday’s game at Dallas, Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve approached Kayla McBride with a message:
Relax and play. Don’t be so tense.
“After the last three games, I was in my head a little bit,” McBride said. “I want to be great for this team.”
Thursday she was.
After scoring 22 points in her prior three games, McBride scored a game-high 22 points in Minnesota’s 85-73 victory over the Wings, the first road victory of the season for the Lynx (5-6). McBride made six of 10 shots, three of six three-pointers and all seven of her free-throw attempts.
And that’s only the start. McBride’s perimeter defense on Arike Ogunbowale was vital to a defensive effort that saw Minnesota hold the Wings (5-7) to 34.7% shooting. Ogunbowale scored 20 points, 12 coming in the third quarter. She was scoreless in the first half and needed 19 shots to score her points.
Relax and play could apply to the entire team that got run out of Target Center by Chicago on Tuesday in a one-sided, defensively-challenged, turnover-prone affair. The team that played Thursday bore little resemblance.
“That’s good news,” Reeve said. “I didn’t like that team Tuesday. This is more of the team we want to be. As I told them, in two of the last three games, we talked about how we didn’t come out and play hard enough. Playing hard is an expectation, not a goal.”
Against the athletic and deep Wings, the Lynx played very well with the exception of the start of the third quarter. They outrebounded the best rebounding team in the league 40-34, broke a string of three consecutive games with 20 or more turnovers, got 19 points and eight boards from Napheesa Collier and a 14-point, 12-rebound game from center Sylvia Fowles, the 170th double-double of her career.
The Lynx held Marina Mabrey, who came in averaging nearly 17 points a game, scoreless. Lynx starters outscored their Dallas counterparts 65-37.
The game’s key stretch came in the third quarter. Up 43-33 at the half, the Lynx knew the Wings would punch back. Ogunbowale scored 10 points in a 13-2 start to the third quarter that put Dallas up 46-45 on an Ogunbowale three-pointer.
Moments later, McBride led the Lynx back. Her three-pointer started a 13-7 Lynx run to finish the quarter. McBride had eight of those 13, including a three-point play. Then, up 60-55 after three, the Lynx opened the fourth quarter 10-0 — with five points coming from Damiris Dantas — to go up by 15.
“Dallas had a lot of scorers, we knew they would have a run,” Collier said. “The key was us not getting flustered. Knowing it would happen, going back to doing what we needed to do and stop the bleeding.”
Minnesota’s first road victory of the season was the 250th win of Reeve’s career; she’s the only coach in WNBA history with 250 wins with the same team.
For McBride, it was important. She missed camp playing in Europe. She rushed to Minnesota in time to start in the opener without having practiced with the team. Being honest, she said, there has been some fatigue from the long overseas season.
But Thursday was good.
“Feel good, mind clear, excited to play,” she said. “I felt I didn’t give my best performance for my team [Tuesday]. I wanted to bounce back and show them I was here.”
The Star Tribune did not travel for this game. This article was written using the television broadcast and video interviews before and/or after the game.
