The Guru’s WNBA Roundup: Indiana Rides First Half Explosion Over Dallas; Washington Upsets Seattle; New York Rides Another Deep Rally Over Atlanta; L.A. Ends 13-Game, 5-Season Slide to Connecticut

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

After scoring 59 points in the second half a few days earlier at home, Indiana topped it with 64 in the first half Sunday and Caitlin Clark double-doubled with 14 points and 13 assists as the top pick of the 2024 draft faced this year’s No. 1 pick in UConn’s Paige Bueckers as the Fever 11-10 romped over 11th-place Dallas 102-83 before an Indianapolis crowd of 17-274 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, site of this Saturday’s All-Star Game at 8:330 p.m. on ABC.

On Friday night ESPN will air the skills and 3-point contests.

The Wings fell to 6-16 at 12 games behind first-place and five behind the eighth and final playoff spot if the postseason got underway now instead of early September.

Bueckers was 9-of-15 from the field scoring 21 points with four points and four boards.

This became the first matchup of the most recent two No. 1 picks because Clark was sidelined when the teams last met.

Indiana and Washington moved up into a sixth-place tie, the Mystics keeping pace by winning 74-69 at Seattle (13-9), which despite the loss held fourth place by a half-game, before a Storm crowd of 11,126 at Climate Pledge Arena.

Atlanta (12-9) was unable to gain ground staying in fifth because after blowing a 17-point lead held late in the Dream’s last visit to defending champion New York (14-6), this time the Liberty having more on the clock to work with,rallied back from a 19-point deficit in the first half that shrunk to 11 at the break and won 79-72 in Brooklyn at the Barclays Center before a nearly packed house of 17,265 to move into a second-place tie with idle Phoenix (14-6) three games behind idle and first-place Minnesota (18-4), which has lost two of its last three games and will try to even the Windy City three-day road trip Monday visiting 10th-place Chicago (7-13) at Wintrust Arena at 8 p.m.

The Lynx will be playing their 10th game in 16 days, including hosting the Commissioner’s Cup championship game won by Indiana and two pairs of back-to-back games in less than a week. That number will grow to 11 in 18 days when Phoenix visits the Target Center Wednesday before the All-Star game which has Lynx standout Napheesa Collier as captain of one squad that will see her coach Cheryl Reeve, the former La Salle star from South Jersey, in charge.

 The other All-Star group will be captained by Indiana’s Clark, who beat out Collier for most combined votes from the fans, players and media. Her team will be coached by New York’s Sandy Brondello, whose Liberty had the second-best record to Minnesota at the deadline to determine the two coaches for the game.

The other game Sunday saw 11th-place Los Angeles (7-14) edge last-place Connecticut 92-88 at home before a crowd of 12,184 at Crypto.com Arena, formerly called the Staples Center, as the Sun after snapping a 10-game losing streak dropped two more on the current road trip to fall to 3-18.

It was the Sun’s first loss in 14 games to Los Angeles dating to 2020.

Indiana Routs Dallas

Technically this game had the last three No. 1 picks because Aaliyah Boston in 2023 was taken off South Carolina’s squad that lost to Clark’s Iowa team that lost to LSU in the championship.

Clark went in 2024 from the Hawkeyes that lost to South Carolina in the NCAA title game and Bueckers in April was picked from the Huskies that had just beaten Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks for an extended NCAA record 12th championship denying South Carolina a chance to gain a repeat.

This was Clark’s third game back and playing on a minutes restriction after missing five because of a groin injury that occurred a few games after returning from missing five more games with a quad mishap.

This was her second pro contest with at least 10 points, 10 assists and five steals, just the fifth WNBA player in the league’s 29-year history to record multiple such games.

Indiana tied a team record with 30 assists on 40 field goals.

“That’s about as good as it’s going to get,” Clark said. “It just shows the selflessness of this group. Just really proud of this group how we share the ball and that’s going to make us pretty hard to guard.”

The Fever’s 69 points, a franchise record, were the most in a half this season, the second time in less than two days achieving such, and at the break led the Wings by 18 points.

“I liked the first half,” said Indiana coach Stephanie White. “I liked that we had a 75 percent assist rate. That we took care of the ball. Twenty-three points off 30 turnovers is really good. Wd have to build 40 minutes to get to where we want to. That’s our journey.”

Indiana had the lead locked up the rest of the way when Aari McDonald hit a make from deep 33 seconds into the second quarter that the Fever went on to score 36 points overall on 16-for-21 from the field.

Natasha Howard scored 18, Boston scored 17, and Sophie Cunningham scored 13 for the home bunch.

“I probably still didn’t shoot it as good as I would have liked, but it’s coming, and like I said pre-game, I feel I’m a couple shots away from having a really good game,” Clark said. "I thought my playmaking was really good. There was really no reason to really shoot that much. People really executed and I feel when we have five people in double figures we’re going to be really hard to beat.”

Dallas rookie Li Yueru scored 16 points on 8-of-11 from the field, rookie JJ Quinerly out of West Virginia scored 13, while rookie Aziaha James out of N.C. State scored 11.

Former Villanova star Maddy Siegrist, the third pick of the 2023 draft, remains sidelined in Dallas with an injury that didn’t require surgery, but her return is not expected until later in the season.

Former Notre Dame sensation Arike Ogubnbowale returned from missing several games to a thumb injury and was scoreless in ten attempts from the field, finishing with two points.

The Wings recently announced the next game when Indiana visits Aug. 1 will be moved to the American Airlines Arena, home of the NBA Mavericks, to accommodate an expected larger crowd than the 7,000-seat College Park Center on the campus of Texas-Arlington in suburban Dallas.

The team expects to move downtown in the next year or two.

Indiana’s last visit was moved to the NBA arena, though Clark was sidelined with her groin injury.

The game still drew 20,409, at the time the eighth regular season game in WNBA history to draw 20,000+.

NBA Mavericks All-Star Kyrie Irving and overall No. 1 NBA pick Cooper Flagg were among the celebrities in the crowd.

Bueckers scored 27 in that contest.

Indiana is in the Northeast Tuesday playing Connecticut, which is moving the game from the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville playing a contest for the second straight year in Boston at the NBA Celtics’ TD Garden at 8 p.m. on ESPN.

Dallas hosts ninth-place Las Vegas (10-11), a half-game behind expansion and eighth place Golden State (10-10) Wednesday at 8 p.m.

The Valkyries host Monday’s other WNBA game greeting Phoenix at 10 p.m. on the streaming League Pass web site.

Washington Upsets Seattle

The winning Mystics continue to be one of the surprises of the WNBA season at the halfway point in which 3.5 games separate sixth and 2.5 games separate fourth place from ninth.

Brittney Sykes got 10 of her 19 points for Washington in the final period while All-Star rookie Sonia Citron from Notre Dame scored 17.

Sister All-Star rookie Kiki Iriafen out of Southern Cal — Dallas’ Becker is the other All-Star newbie this weekend – had 10 points and 10 boards as her sixth double-double tied the Mystics’ franchise record for rookie double-doubles with Chamique Holdsclaw with six.

Rookie Lucy Olsen, taken in the second round out of Villanova and Iowa, did not get into the game.

“We’re on a good trajectory, we’re peaking,” Sykes said of the Mystics play of late. “We are where are feet are. We don’t look too far ahead. Game by game. Practice by practice. And that has kept us poised. And that’s what has kept us together.

“We handled this what we did today. We got L.A. Tuesday. So now we can start to prepare for L.A.”

Seattle’s Ezi Magbegor had her best game to date this season with 19 points, while Nneka Ogwumike scored 16 and Skylar Diggins scored 10. Former South Carolina star Tiffany Mitchell who was picked up by the Storm Thursday following her waiver from Las Vegas on June 30, scored 12 points.

The Storm moved within a point 70-69 with 40.8 seconds remaining in regulation on Ogwumike’s layup by Sykes got the points right back narrowly beating the shot clock.

Diggins turned it over with 17 seconds left by stepping out of bounds and Sykes then hit two from the line to wrap the game up.

The third pick of the 2013 draft behind Brittney Griner out of Baylor and Elena Delle Donne out of Delaware, Diggins had four assists and moved into an eighth-place tie with Saint Joseph’s graduate Natasha Cloud, who played earlier Sunday, with 1,628 career helpers.

Washington held former UConn standout Gabby Williams to six points on 2-of-9 from the field and she was seen limping off the court in the final seconds after also finishing with five rebounds and four assists.

Washington is in Tuesday’s other game playing at Los Angeles, while Seattle will greet Golden State on Wednesday.

New York Rallies on Atlanta

The Liberty got a little healthier with the return of Natasha Cloud following being sidelined a short bit with a hip injury and Isabelle Harrison from a knee injury though Finals MVP Jonquel Jones remains out of action until sometime after the All-Star break.

Down 19 in the first half, New York rallied to an 11-point deficit at the half and then Leonie Fiebich, who scored 21, hit a pair of 3-pointers near the end of the third for the Liberty’s first lead since early in the game.

Slightly up 60-58 in the fourth, the home team surged to a 12-2 run to gain control of the finish. Kennedy Burke scored five points in the run and Nyara Sabally made a shot from deep for a 70-60 lead at the five-minute mark.

All-Star Breanna Stewart collected 18 points with 10 boards for New York.

The Dream cut the deficit to four points before the Liberty turned them aside.

“What made us good in the third quarter was Stewie being the point guard, bringing up the ball,” Fiebich said.

“We were searching for what’s going to work,” Brondello said of the third quarter. “I thought the lineup was versatile, it showed them a different look. I thought we executed well, defended well, and we went bigger. Size against this team is good. We love size.”

Atlanta was short-handed, missing Rhyne Howard, who suffered a knee injury in Saturday’s loss at Indiana, while Allisha Gray led the Dream with 16 points.

Brittney Griner scored 10 with 10 rebounds as the former longtime Phoenix star got her first double-double since coming to Atlanta in the offseason.

Naz Hillmon, who scored 11, set a Dream mark with her 128th straight game, passing Iziane Castro Marques by a contest.

In the first half, the Liberty’s Sabrina Ionescue was cold missing all but one of her 11 attempts from the field.

The Liberty next host Indiana for the first time this season after visiting the Midwest franchise twice playing the Fever at 7:30 p.m. on CBSSN.

Indiana will be on the end of a back-to-back coming from the Connecticut game Tuesday being played in Boston.

Los Angeles Outlasts Connecticut

The Sun in the loss made it the first time in 14 games Connecticut fell to the Sparks since back at Mohegan 80-76 on Aug. 28, 2020, the summer when because of CoVid the entire WNBA season was held in a bubble in Florida.

Kelsey Plum powered Los Angeles with 18 of her 23 points in the second half while Azura Stevens had 21 points and 11 boards for the whole game.

Rickea Jackson scored 19 and Dearica Hamby scored 17 while reports are indicating that former Stanford star Cameron Brink, who was born in Princeton, N.J., and missed most of her rookie season with an injury could return sometime next month.

Connecticut’s Bria Hartley scored 25 points and rookie Saniya Rivers out of N.C. State had a personal best 20 points, Jacy Sheldon scored 13, and rookie Aneesah Morrow out of LSU and DePaul scored 10.

The Sun, who narrowly lost at Seattle on the weekend after beating the Storm at home last week to snap a franchise-worst ten-game slide, led by eight late in the first half before Jackson and Julie Allemand combined for six points to leave the visitors narrowly up 49-47 t the break.

Stevens hit a pair of 3-pointers in the third and Plum bottled a 10-1 run inside to put L.A. ahead 57-50 with 6:47 left in the period and the Sparks stayed ahead the rest of the way.

Los Angeles thrived on 14 second-chance points off 15 offensive boards to counter Connecticut’s 50 percent shooting from the field.

The Sun head home to host Indiana in Boston on Tuesday, starting a six-game stand while Los Angeles, as mentioned, greets Washington Tuesday.