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The Minnesota Lynx have been the best team in the WNBA this season. Led by the two-headed monster of MVP Maya Moore and two-time DPOY Sylvia Fowles (not to mention the stellar play of Lindsey Whalen and others), Minnesota has had the best defense and the biggest average margin of victory. It's no surprise they sit at a WNBA-best 17-6.
The San Antonio Stars have... not been the best team in the WNBA this season. They have the second-worst record and winning percentage in the league, at 7-17 and 29%, respectively. But, for the first two-quarters, you'd have thought those teams had switched bodies.
The Stars were in total control of the game. A four-point first quarter lead turned into an 11 point halftime margin. To say that they were cruising is an understatement. The Stars even managed to stretch that lead a little further, to 13.
And then, San Antonio began to dim.
A 13 point lead turned into a six-point deficit; a 25-18 second quarter, in favor of San Antonio, turned into a 30-13 smashing in favor of Minnesota. The Lynx, stymied in the first half, hit 13-18 shots in the third quarter alone. At 2:31 left, Sylvia Fowles hit a jump hook and put the Lynx up 57-56, and they would never look back.
The comeback overshadowed a monster game by Kayla McBride. She had 24 points on 10-20 shooting, including 3-7 from deep. Three other teammates hit double figures, in Sophia Young-Malcolm, Jia Perkins, and Danielle Adams, but it was not enough.
The problem is that McBride ran into a buzzsaw of WNBA talent: Maya Moore had 32 points and nine rebounds, Sylvia Fowles had 16 points, Anna Cruz had eleven, and Lindsey Whalen hit 2000 career assists with nine in this game. It was a total team effort that lead to this comeback for the Lynx.
In this win, Minnesota locked up a playoff berth, and the Stars fell even farther away from one. Minnesota heads next to Atlanta to take on the Struggling Dream; that game is on Friday, August 14th, and starts at 6:40 PM central time. The Stars travel to Seattle and take on the Storm, the only team in the league with a worse record than them, on Sunday, August 16th; that game starts at 8 PM central time.