The Minnesota Lynx took a 2-1 sequence lead over the Connecticut Solar with a 90-81 Sport 3 win on Friday night time.
It was not arduous to see who the distinction was within the sport —unquestionably, Lynx star ahead Napheesa Collier.
She completed the 2024 common season as a runner-up for league MVP and received the league’s Defensive Participant of the 12 months award. She demonstrated all of these abilities on Friday with an extremely environment friendly night time that noticed her rating a game-high 26 factors on 11-for-19 capturing from the ground.
Collier additionally pulled in a game-high 11 rebounds (together with 9 on the defensive finish) to report the double-double. She was a plus-11 in her 33 minutes of basketball.
In a sport that was determined by 9 factors, that was a game-changing efficiency and the kind one expects to see from an MVP runner-up in a pivotal sport of a playoff sequence.
In most years, Collier’s regular-season efficiency most likely would have been sufficient to earn a league MVP. She simply merely misplaced out to an unbelievable 12 months from Las Vegas star A’Ja Wilson. However that doesn’t take away from the season Collier had or the participant she is. She is clearly probably the greatest all-around gamers within the WNBA and got here by on Friday when her staff wanted her to make a distinction.
Courtney Williams additionally had a standout sport for the Lynx, scoring 16 factors on 7-for-10 capturing whereas additionally distributing a game-high eight assists.
The Lynx solely made 5 three-pointers on Friday, but it surely didn’t matter as that they had surgical precision of their offensive sport, dominating within the paint and capturing a whopping 57.4 p.c from the ground as a staff. In addition they completed the sport with 22 assists to solely 10 turnovers.
Conversely, they held the Solar to simply 41.1 p.c from the sector and solely 3-for-20 from three-point vary.
The Lynx now maintain a 2-1 sequence lead and have an opportunity to shut it out on Sunday. With a win, they’d advance to the WNBA Finals for the seventh time in franchise historical past and the primary time since profitable the championship through the 2017 season.
