WASHINGTON — In the seconds before Sonia Citron hit the biggest shot of the season so far for the Washington Mystics, the main emotion she felt was confusion.
The second-year guard was jockeying for position for a jump ball in the Mystics’ offensive half, and she wasn’t sure how far toward the basket the officials would let her move. She was positioned to the left of center Lauren Betts, who was about to take the jump ball against Toronto Tempo guard Brittney Sykes with 2.1 seconds remaining. Citron had plenty of space behind her and to her right, with her defender committed to staying between her and the basket.
“I just remember not knowing where to set up because I didn’t know what was going on or the rules, like who can go [where],” Citron told reporters postgame.
All the jostling delayed the jump ball for a while, which tested Betts’ nerves.
“There was so much buildup into that tip,” the 6’7 rookie told reporters postgame. “I was like, ‘Can we just get the ball up so that we can score?’”
The referees eventually made the players stop moving and get set, and then it was time for the movements that would define the game.
The 5’9 Sykes, who sometimes took opening tips as a Mystic because of her leaping ability, got her fingers to the ball first, but Betts stayed with it and tapped it to Citron. Citron caught it with one hand, and she spun as she gathered the ball to create space for a jump shot just inside the 3-point line.
“I had to shoot it. I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “And just luckily it went in.”
Citron swished the fadeaway jumper with half a second left, and her momentum carried her back toward the Mystics’ bench. Point guard Georgia Amoore was the first one to reach her, leaping into her arms just before the rest of their teammates mobbed them. Betts pumped her fist in the air, and assistant coach Barbara Turner wrapped an arm around Citron’s shoulders and jumped up and down with the scrum of players.
Once they stayed grounded long enough, forward Kiki Iriafen wrapped her arms around Citron’s waist and hoisted her into the air. That’s Iriafen’s default way of celebrating her teammates, and she was determined to do it despite an ankle injury that kept her out of Friday’s game.
The officials reviewed Citron’s shot to make sure it came before the buzzer, but all the review did was set off another round of celebrations once the basket was confirmed. Guard Lucy Olsen gestured downward with her fingers, signaling, “Count it!”
The players eventually huddled at center court as they do after every home game, win or loss. Head coach Sydney Johnson high-fived many of them as they got there. Then he walked backward and watched them from a distance, beaming like a proud parent.
Johnson clapped as the players broke their huddle, and he high-fived them again as they headed back to the locker room. When Citron approached him, he flexed and shouted. “Shoot the ball!” she said he told her.
It didn’t matter that she’d already taken the shot minutes earlier — his pride was so evident in his body language that the words were almost superfluous.
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“We want her to shoot the ball and just keep letting it fly,” Johnson told reporters postgame. “We trust and believe. Her teammates do as well. There’s not really a bad shot that leaves her hands. … She made a big-time shot, and she’s done that before. So it’s good to celebrate that.”
Citron finished with 17 points, five rebounds, three assists and two steals in 34 minutes. But after shooting 6-for-16 from the field, she partly blamed herself for the moment being so dramatic. Twice in the postgame press conference, she mentioned that she’d missed several shots leading up to her game-winner.
Still, Citron hit the shot that mattered most — and Betts helped get the Mystics to that point in the first place.
Not only did Betts win the pivotal jump ball, but she also had a career-high 18 points on 8-for-9 shooting, with four rebounds and two steals off the bench. She became just the third Mystics rookie ever to have 18 or more points on at least 85% shooting from the field, joining Citron last season and Mystics Hall of Famer Alana Beard in 2004.
Betts’ 21 minutes on Friday were also a career high. The No. 4 overall pick in the 2026 WNBA Draft had averaged just 5.8 points and 13.7 minutes per game entering Friday, but she knew she’d need to do more after Iriafen was ruled out. That left the Mystics with just three healthy post players.
“My teammates and my coaches just breathed confidence into me,” Betts said. “… Knowing that my opportunity is going to come today, [I was] just making sure mentally I was prepared to be confident out there and just play my game.”
Betts started the game hot, scoring 8 points on 4-for-4 shooting in the first quarter. She kept things simple, getting her first two baskets on putbacks and her next one on a strong seal and layup in transition. She didn’t need to dribble until her fourth basket, when she posted up, took one dribble and scored through a double-team.
“I think in practice, just getting reps against the practice guys, against double-teams, really helps me, and I’ve been dealing with [doubles] a lot in my college career,” Betts said. “So yeah, I think it’s just … making sure that I’m doing the right things and just being patient.”
Betts also hit a couple of shots down the stretch for the Mystics, including a spinning turnaround jumper with 3:21 left and a long 2-pointer about a minute later. The former is a shot she’s relied on throughout the season. The latter is a shot she’s comfortable taking, too, but before she hit that, she’d only taken six jump shots all season from at least 15 feet out, making one.
Betts said postgame that she felt like she got to the right spots on the floor and trusted herself to execute when she got the ball. But what stood out most to Citron and Johnson was how Betts read the floor when she caught the ball, rather than trying to predetermine what to do.
“I think she picked her spots perfectly,” Citron said. “She was ready when we passed it to her. She was aggressive. She read the double-teams right — when to pass it out, when to take it herself. But what you guys just saw is what we see every day in practice. … So we’re not surprised that she played like this. That’s Lauren.”
That level of play from Betts and the team’s confidence in her is what set up the jump ball at the end of the game. On that offensive possession, with the Mystics down by a point with 11 seconds left, Johnson elected to give Betts the ball in the post. She got double-teamed, and Sykes tied her up, forcing the jump ball — but an advantageous one for the Mystics, with Betts standing 10 inches taller than Sykes.
“We knew with Kiki out that [Lauren] would have more opportunities, and she took full advantage,” Johnson said. “… So we just thought she earned that moment, and so more than a few times down the stretch, we were calling her number.”
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Earlier in the game, it had looked improbable that there would be such a dramatic ending. The Mystics had led by as many as 18 points in the third quarter and 16 in the fourth, largely because of their 54 points in the paint. They lead the WNBA with 43.6 paint points per game, and Friday was the fourth time this season they’ve had 50 or more.
The Mystics also shot 29-for-47, or 62%, from inside the arc, and their 15 offensive rebounds effectively gave them do-overs on many of the shots they missed. Midway through the third quarter, they got four offensive rebounds on a single possession, which culminated in a layup from center Shakira Austin that put the Mystics up 11.
In the fourth quarter, though, the Mystics simply couldn’t stop Tempo guard Marina Mabrey. She had 18 points in the period on 4-for-6 3-point shooting, including a 4-point play with just over a minute left that cut Washington’s lead to 3.
For a minute, it looked like the Mystics might see an elite shooter snatch a game from them for the second straight game. On Monday, they’d clawed back from a 17-point deficit to take a 1-point lead over the Indiana Fever with 4.3 seconds left, only to watch Indiana guard Caitlin Clark nail a 32-foot 3-pointer with 1.2 seconds left.
Johnson has been pleased to see the Mystics hang in so many games despite being the WNBA’s youngest team this season and the second-youngest in league history. Their record is 5-6, but they took the title-contending New York Liberty to overtime on May 10, beat the star-laden Fever on the road in overtime on May 15, and lost by just 5 points to a veteran Los Angeles Sparks team on May 29. Asked before Friday’s win to evaluate his team’s performance so far this season, Johnson said he was “absolutely thrilled” with the players’ development and their joyful but focused mentality.
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At the same time, the Mystics know that if they keep playing with fire late in games, they’ll get burned.
“There’s been plenty [of] games this season where we kind of lost it at the last second,” Citron said on Friday. “But I think as a team, we just have to learn to not put ourselves in that position. … And we’re happy that we could learn from a win and we don’t have to learn from a loss again.”
Citron ensured that the mood would be celebratory on Friday, adding to her reputation as a late-game shot-maker.
Last season, she hit a game-winning 3-pointer in overtime against the Dallas Wings. She nearly had another game-winner against the Fever in regulation on May 15, nailing a half-court heave, but the officials ruled that it came after the buzzer. And as a senior at Notre Dame, she made a contested 3-pointer with 0.6 seconds left to force overtime against North Carolina State. (The Fighting Irish eventually lost that game in double overtime.)
So a natural question for Citron postgame was where this ranked for her among her game-winners. She thought for a moment, then responded in her usual quiet, understated way.
“Yeah, I think this is [the] top one, probably, right now,” Citron concluded with a smile.
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.
