WASHINGTON — On May 15, Washington Mystics guard Sonia Citron and forward Kiki Iriafen sat in a press conference and fielded questions after they’d each set career highs in scoring in an overtime win against the Indiana Fever. Citron had scored 30 points on 10-for-14 shooting, and Iriafen had tallied 25 points on 11-for-17 shooting and 13 rebounds.
Citron was asked about some of the improvements she’d made in the offseason, including her ability to handle physicality in the paint.
“Just trying to be more like Kiki,” she quipped.
The comment made both of them crack up, but it had plenty of truth to it. They both had stellar rookie seasons, earning All-Star berths and combining for over 28 points per game. This season, they’ve been even better. Citron is averaging 17.6 points, 3.9 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.4 steals in 33.6 minutes per game, while Iriafen is averaging 15.3 points, 8.5 rebounds and 1.3 assists in 25.8 minutes per game.
To take those next steps in their development, they had to expand their games in the offseason — which included leaning into the other’s strengths.
“I don’t know what happened,” player development lead Clinton Crouch jokingly told The IX Basketball on May 31. “Now we got Sonia at the rim and Kiki … stretching it.”
Citron led the WNBA as a rookie by shooting 44.5% from 3-point range on more than four attempts per game. But she has gotten into the paint — Iriafen’s domain — and finished there more in Year 2.
She is averaging 7.6 paint points per game this season, up from 5.2 a year ago. And 53% of her field-goal attempts are coming from the restricted area or elsewhere in the paint, up from 45% in 2025. Those additional shots are coming instead of midrange jumpers outside the paint, as she is still taking a similar share of 3-pointers as she did last season.
But Citron’s increase in scoring closer to the rim isn’t just because she’s taking more shots there. She is shooting 65.4% on shots in the restricted area and elsewhere in the paint, up from 53.8% last season.
Attacking the paint more has also helped Citron draw about twice as many shooting fouls per game as she did as a rookie. As a result, she’s getting 33% of her points this season from free throws, up from 20% in 2025.
Both last season and this season, defenders have been draped all over Citron. She ranked third in the WNBA last season and currently ranks second in “player gravity,” which is a measure of how much attention a player commands from opposing defenses. She’s “just getting manhandled, frankly,” Mystics head coach Sydney Johnson told reporters in May.
So in the offseason, Citron resolved to get better at absorbing contact — and at giving it right back. She got stronger and played a lot against the Mystics’ male practice players, which forced her to be physical to get to the spots she wanted. She also worked on her post moves to help her create space for fadeaways or layups.
“You have to be physical, but there is a sense of footwork or fakes [so] that I’m not just charging in there with a full head of steam,” Citron told The IX Basketball recently.
Citron also worked on her ball-handling, which has allowed her to get to more spots on the floor against pressure. There were plenty of workouts with Crouch where she only drove left, to improve at her weaker side, or she did three times as many reps going left as going right. She also made a point to practice that in live play, telling herself, “The easy way out might be going to my right hand, but let me make myself uncomfortable and try to go in left.”
“It’s getting her comfortable with the balance of her drives … [and] footwork into the ball-handling, which is really the key when it comes to ball-handling,” Crouch said. “You have to manipulate the ball as well as your feet.
“So adding all of that is just unlocking her ability to execute things that she saw as a rookie, things that she knew, ‘OK, this has to happen,’ but the skill set didn’t allow her to get there, and now it is. … Teams were forcing her to her left, left, left, left, left, and now if you do that this year, she’s ready to make you pay.”
Citron is going left on 48% of her drives this season, up from 40% in 2025, per league data provided to The IX Basketball for games through Saturday. In both seasons, she has been more efficient at creating points for herself and others by driving to her right than to her left. But she improved so much in the offseason that she’s as effective going left this year as she was going right last season.
With all the pressure Citron has faced from opposing defenses, she also wanted to improve as a facilitator in the offseason. She said she feels like the game has slowed down for her this season, which has helped her make reads and find open teammates. The result is that she’s averaging 1.2 more assists per game than in 2025, and her assist rate has jumped from 13.5% to 19.7%.
“Her scoring is something that we’re going to lean on always. [But] I love the advances that she’s made in terms of playmaking for others,” Johnson said on June 8, after Citron had had six and eight assists in her previous two games. “… That’s not something that we necessarily saw early last year, and now [we’re] seeing her grow and blossom.”
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More than half of Citron’s assists this season have gone to Iriafen and center Shakira Austin, which illustrates how her versatility is helping the team’s other stars rather than crowding them. Iriafen has also helped space the floor by working on her 3-point shot — adding part of Citron’s game to her own.
In 2025, Iriafen took just 11 3-pointers in 44 games and made two. This season, she has already attempted 15 in 12 games played. She has made five, which forces defenders to at least get a hand up.
The way she improved as a shooter in the offseason was simple: “Every day, shooting a million gazillion shots,” she told The IX Basketball. “Even if I didn’t want to, I was shooting. There were some workouts [where] the whole hour was just me shooting threes.”
Iriafen isn’t quite “Kiki Curry” — a nickname assistant coach Barbara Turner jokingly called her last season for how she shot the ball in morning workouts — yet, but her confidence has clearly grown. She sees it in herself, and her teammates and coaches see it, too.
“She looks way more comfortable — way more comfortable,” Crouch said. “And I think comfort is a huge part of every shooter. … Last year, Kira and Kiki, they were shooting it to not miss. This year, they’re shooting to make shots. … You can see the work.”
“I’m just really happy for her, and I know it’s only going to get better,” Citron said. “She’s going to keep getting more confident as they keep going in. But yeah, I mean, I love that. Stretching the floor out is only going to help our team.”
Iriafen had always planned to expand her range in the offseason, knowing it would help create space for herself and Austin to play off each other. But her shooting became even more important when center Stefanie Dolson left in free agency this spring after making 99 3-pointers on 43.0% shooting in the previous two seasons in Washington. In Dolson’s place is rookie Lauren Betts, a 6’7 center who attempted just two threes in her entire college career and hasn’t taken any yet as a Mystic.
Playing with Betts is “forcing me to stretch my game out more, which was going to happen anyway, so I’m glad it’s happening now,” Iriafen told reporters in preseason. “… I think that’s going to be a great thing for my career.”
This season, 12% of Iriafen’s shots are coming from 3-point range, compared with less than 3% in 2025. She is also taking a larger share of shots in the restricted area than last season, and she has cut down significantly on midrange shots. That’s part of a concerted effort by the Mystics’ staff to limit the team’s midrange shots and get players like Iriafen and Austin to step behind the arc for, potentially, a larger payoff.
“At times last year, we settled [for midrange shots],” Johnson said in May. “We spent a lot of time talking about that in the offseason. … [It] doesn’t mean their midrange will completely disappear, but you want to make those efficiently or you want to take a few steps back and let it fly.”
Related reading: How Shakira Austin is ‘blossoming’ as a leader, passer and all-around threat for the Washington Mystics
Iriafen is also shooting more efficiently from 2-point range, taking more free throws, blocking more shots and committing fewer turnovers this season. The latter comes even as she’s being encouraged to drive the ball more from outside the paint.
“My coaches are kind of forcing me to get off the block and do some more things, make something happen, which can be scary at times,” Iriafen said after a win over the New York Liberty on Friday. “But I’m trying my best. … I just want to be a more complete player and not put myself in a box.”
Against the Liberty, Iriafen repeatedly attacked the defense off the dribble, which helped her score a game-high 20 points. Midway through the third quarter, for instance, she caught the ball behind the 3-point line near the top of the key. She got a screen from Citron — often it’s the other way around at that spot on the court — and drove all the way to the rim, drawing a foul on Liberty forward Breanna Stewart in the process.
“She’s starting to expand different ways that she can help us,” Johnson said after the season opener on May 8. “… And that’s the makings of a really, really good player.”
As rookies, both Iriafen and Citron appeared to have seamless adjustments to the WNBA, scoring in double figures in their first game and continuing to impress all season. Yet they’ve looked even more comfortable and confident in their second seasons. Opposing head coaches Lynne Roberts (Los Angeles Sparks), Stephanie White (Fever) and Sandy Brondello (Toronto Tempo) all mentioned those words when asked what they’ve noticed about the duo this season.
“I think [the difference is] just being comfortable and understanding what the league is like, the ebbs and flows of everything that it entails — not just game to game, but travel, everything — and being able to make adjustments to how teams are playing them,” White told reporters on June 8. “There’s no substitute for experience, and those two got great experience a year ago.”
“It feels fairly different [this year], just because … I kind of have been through it already,” Citron said. “So I think I’m just better equipped to handle what’s thrown at me — again, just because I’ve seen it. Yeah, [it] definitely feels better.”
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Citron has particularly noticed the difference in crunch time. With the game on the line, she’s been able to settle herself more easily and focus on the controllables, like taking care of the ball and defending, instead of worrying about the result. That paid off most for the Mystics against the Tempo on June 12, when she nailed a last-second fadeaway to win the game.
Similarly, Iriafen had the game-deciding layup and free throw in the 3-point win over the Liberty on Friday. And two days later, in a win over the first-place Minnesota Lynx, she had 4 straight points to give the Mystics the lead with 20 seconds left and then an offensive rebound that helped them keep it.
At times, Citron and Iriafen have been noticeably more aggressive than they were last season. That’s partly because they played alongside veteran guard Brittney Sykes and shared the scoring load with her until she was traded last August. Ever since that trade, they’ve known the team will go as they go.
“Both of them need to be really aggressive for us to be successful,” point guard Georgia Amoore told The IX Basketball in May. “And Kiki’s just doing that really well. Every time she gets the ball, she’s going to create some contact and finish with a bucket. I can’t tell you how many and-ones she’s got this year, or [how] many situations where a foul should have been called because she’s so strong it doesn’t even look like it’s a foul. …
“For Sonia, she obviously plays the game with an elite pace, an elite IQ, an elite vision. And in those moments, yeah, she plays in the flow, but I’ve seen many moments this year already where she will be the flow. So [against] Toronto, she took over. Indiana, she took over. So that’s … where I see the growth in her game, too.”
Though Citron and Iriafen are only in their second season as pros, they’re playing beyond their years, and that’s helped the team overachieve, too. The Mystics are the youngest team in the WNBA, yet they’re 8-7, with two wins over teams in the top four in the standings and a third over another team that’s ahead of them.
Led by Citron and Iriafen — two franchise cornerstones with many offseasons of growth ahead of them — it could be a similar story for the Mystics for years to come, until there aren’t many teams they’re looking up at anymore.
Monumental Sports and Entertainment, the group that owns the Washington Mystics, holds a minority stake in The IX Basketball. The IX Basketball’s editorial operations are entirely independent of Monumental and all other business partners.
