The Connecticut Sun and the Minnesota Lynx competed in Game 3 of the semifinals. It was expected to be yet again a defensive battle. The Sun and the Lynx are two of the best defensive teams in the league. Other than that, they couldn’t be less alike.
“I think we’re very different. We’re similar in terms of the outcomes of the games. You know, the score, it’s close, they’re closely matched, but we could not be more different,” Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve told reporters before Game 3.
Both teams strengths and abilities match up with each other, which is why there has been discussion around the similar matchup all season long.
“We’re opposites. And what they’re good at, matches up well with what we’re good at,” Reeve said. “Teams that shoot threes and spread you out, that’s us. Conn[ecticut] plays with physicality, takes you out of that, makes you play more one on one.”
Mabrey struggled from behind the arc
Connecticut Sun guard Marina Mabrey was zero for nine from behind the arc until she hit a 26-foot three point shot with just over three minutes left in the game. In the game, Mabrey went one-for-11 from behind the three point line.
Connecticut Sun head coach Stephanie White spoke on the shot opportunities that Mabrey took during the game.
“I think some of them were good looks. It’s not very often when Marina is going to go one for 11. Certainly, I felt like some of them were good looks, but I also felt like sometimes we didn’t make it work enough, didn’t get the ball from side to side enough, or didn’t create for one another enough. So it’s a little bit of both,” White told reporters postgame.
Reeve didn’t credit her defense for stopping Mabrey tonight but instead said it was because her shots just weren’t falling.
“I thought we were okay on Mabrey,” Reeve said. “She’s a shot maker, right? I thought she had some shots that she just didn’t make, right? I know I would feel that way. And so I think we’ve got to again, look at that, and I’m not trying to give her those same opportunities in our next game. So obviously she’s a great player, great scorer, playmaker, all those things. But I didn’t think that it was necessarily everything that we did. I thought there were opportunities that maybe ordinarily go down that just didn’t for her today.”
Reeve wasn’t too happy with her teams defensive performance during Game 3. She wants her team to defend the paint more ahead of Sunday’s game.
“I don’t think we played great defense. We didn’t play great defense today,” Reeve said. “We did some things well on some players, but 44 points in paint, they got to the free-throw line. They clobbered us on the glass over and over and over again. That’s not a good defensive team. And so we’ve got to be a lot better.”
The Lynx know that they have a defensive strength and that utilizing that will continue to bring them success.
“We’ve really pride ourselves on defense all year, and I do think we can go to another level, like coach said, they got some easy things, like some rebounding. But just pressuring the ball, same as anyone’s trying to do. We’re pressuring the ball, we’re trying to have each other’s backs getting rotation, and just play the thing that’s gotten us to this point,” Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier told reporters.
Mabrey is still that x-factor player for the Sun after they acquired her via a midseason trade with the Chicago Sky when searching for answers to score three-pointers. Mabrey will need to perform well in Game 4 if the Sun want to avoid elimination.
The Sun look ahead to Game 4
Connecticut was eliminated in the semifinals last year after falling to the New York Liberty. They are trying to avoid having the same outcome as last season as they hope to push for a Game 5 and win Sunday’s game.
The Sun have to look to get more movement on the floor offensively and do a better defensive job on the Lynx. The Lynx had four starters in double digits in Game 3, which can be dangerous for the Sun if they allow for it to happen again.
“You got to come out. You got to be ready to compete. I feel like we’re two pretty evenly matched teams. I feel like, when we play at our best on the defensive end of the floor, which we’ve seen for most of the year, this was a little bit of an anomaly. When we play our best, we make things difficult. We didn’t make things difficult,” White said. “And on the flip side, we have to continue to do a better job of finding things that are working for us offensively, that can create space for our players to go to work… But for us, we’re our best when we get out of transition. If you don’t get stops, you’re not getting out in transition.”
White noted that Minnesota’s pressure on defense does affect them sometimes but emphasized that they have to do a better job at handling that pressure.
“I feel like it kind of ebbed and flowed for us. There are times when their pressure affects us and we get a little bit tunnel vision. And AT [Alyssa Thomas] mentioned it that when we got the ball side to side, multiple players touched it, we shared it, we got good, high percentage looks. I think it’s when we feel like we have to all do it ourselves or make the play that’s going to change the momentum. The reality is, it’s not the play that changes momentum, right? It’s digging in on the defensive end. It’s using one another. It’s getting high percentage looks. It’s a series of events,” White said.
“There were times where I felt like we just got stagnant. There are times where we’re trying to get to the third action and not really attacking the first and second one with purpose understanding what we’re trying to get. We did a better job of getting breezy the ball tonight than we had the first two games, but then we got to be able to play at that as well.”
In order for the Sun to win it is going to take a team effort on all ends of the floor. Sun forward Alyssa Thomas showed some frustration towards her teammates throughout the game. Despite her frustration, Thomas looks to continue to lead this team when they hit the floor for Game 4 against the Lynx on Sunday.
“We didn’t come to compete. It didn’t matter what we were defensively,” Thomas told reporters postgame. “You gotta look in the mirror… At this point no one’s going to hand you anything. If we’re not gonna come out there and compete this is where we are.”