{"id":156452,"date":"2025-09-20T05:48:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T05:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/156452\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T05:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T05:48:07","slug":"wnba-semi-finals-fixed-as-lynx-face-mercury-and-aces-meet-fever-wnba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/156452\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA semi-finals fixed as Lynx face Mercury and Aces meet Fever | WNBA"},"content":{"rendered":"

The WNBA<\/a> semi-finals are set and a new champion is guaranteed after all four remaining teams were challenged in the opening round.<\/p>\n

Minnesota, Las Vegas and Phoenix have all made it this far in the past few years, while Indiana, even without the injured Caitlin Clark, won a playoff series for the first time in a decade<\/a>. The Lynx will face the Mercury, and the Aces will play the Fever in best-of-five series that begin Sunday.<\/p>\n

The Lynx are looking for their first championship since 2017. Minnesota reached the WNBA finals last year before losing to New York in overtime in a decisive Game 5. The Lynx were the only team to sweep their first-round series, but were pushed hard by Golden State.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll face a confident Phoenix squad that knocked out the Liberty in three games. Minnesota, which had the best record in the regular season, won three of the four matchups during the regular season, but the Mercury weren\u2019t completely healthy for most of those meetings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey haven\u2019t played us at full strength yet,\u201d said Phoenix forward Alyssa Thomas, who had her fifth postseason triple-double in the Game 3 win over New York.<\/p>\n

Minnesota are led by Napheesa Collier, who is a leading candidate for the league\u2019s MVP. The Lynx also have a solid group around her including co-Defensive Player of the Year Alanna Smith, Courtney Williams and Kayla McBride.<\/p>\n

The Lynx also have the advantage of a bit more rest then the Mercury, having finished off their series with Golden State on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve matched up with Minnesota pretty well all season. We\u2019re going to celebrate tonight and worry about them tomorrow,\u201d Phoenix coach Nate Tibbetts said.<\/p>\n

The other matchup will have the experienced Aces playing a short-handed Indiana team. The sixth-seeded Fever shocked Atlanta in the opening round, winning without Clark, who is sidelined for the playoffs with a right groin injury that kept her out of the last 2 1\/2 months of the regular season. Indiana is led by Kelsey Mitchell, who had the best season of her career, and Aliyah Boston.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll face an Aces team that needed a go-ahead basket on a follow shot with 12 seconds left to beat Seattle and reach the semi-finals. Reigning MVP A\u2019ja Wilson has been stellar all season long and raised her game during the Aces\u2019 winning streak and first round of the playoffs.<\/p>\n

The Aces won their final 16 games of the regular season, but struggled in their games against the Fever early in the year, dropping two of the three meetings. The last time they played was July 24 and the Aces, who won back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023, have been a very different team since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WNBA semi-finals are set and a new champion is guaranteed after all four remaining teams were challenged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-156452","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\/156452","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=156452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}