COLLEGE PARK, Ga. \u2014 Rhyne Howard scored 18 points, Allisha Gray added 15 and Atlanta beat the Connecticut Sun 87-62 on Monday night, giving the Dream’s Karl Smesko a WNBA-record 29 wins for the most by a first-year coach.<\/p>\n
Atlanta (29-14), which won its fifth straight game, moved past Last Vegas (28-14) for sole possession of second place. The Dream close the regular season on Wednesday at Connecticut.<\/p>\n
Atlanta led 45-40 late in the first half before Saniya Rivers banked in a long three-pointer for Connecticut just before the halftime buzzer. The Dream’s lead was just 52-49 with 5:56 left in the third quarter before closing on a 16-3 run for a 16-point advantage.<\/p>\n
The Sun scored nine points in the third and 10 in the fourth.<\/p>\n
Naz Hillmon had 14 points, five rebounds, four assists and four steals for Atlanta. Maya Caldwell added 11 points and Brittney Griner scored 10.<\/p>\n
Rivers scored 16 points, Aneesah Morrow had 13 points and 14 rebounds, and Tina Charles scored 12 for Connecticut (11-32), which dropped to 4-18 on the road this season.<\/p>\n
Rivers made two three-pointers in the first half to set Connecticut\u2019s rookie record with 42 three-pointers in a single season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLLEGE PARK, Ga. \u2014 Rhyne Howard scored 18 points, Allisha Gray added 15 and Atlanta beat the Connecticut…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-130364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}