{"id":169997,"date":"2025-09-26T06:07:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T06:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/169997\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T06:07:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T06:07:12","slug":"mercury-aim-to-ride-momentum-vs-lynx-in-pivotal-game-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/169997\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercury aim to ride momentum vs. Lynx in pivotal Game 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Phoenix Mercury<\/a> have turned seizing home-court advantage into their postseason identity.<\/p>\n

The Mercury gained the upper hand in their WNBA semifinal series against the top-seed Minnesota Lynx<\/a> with a Game 2 road victory Tuesday, and they will begin defense of their home floor in the third game of the best-of-five series Friday.<\/p>\n

The Mercury overcame a 20-point deficit in the final 16 minutes of regulation and scored the first six points of overtime while evening the series with an 89-83 victory.<\/p>\n

“This is a battle-tested team,” Phoenix coach Nate Tibbetts said of the Lynx. “We haven’t done anything yet. We needed to get one there (Minneapolis). We did our job.”<\/p>\n

The Lynx, who have won four league titles and lost in the finals last year, took Game 1 82-69 at home by outscoring the Mercury by 13 in the fourth quarter. Game 4 is in Phoenix on Sunday.<\/p>\n

“It’s a resilient team,” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said of her group. “It’s a team that responds. There are problem-solvers. Nobody said this stuff was going to be easy. It’s all part of the journey.<\/p>\n

“Now we have to beat a really good team at their place. That’s a tall order. We’ll do all we can to do it.”<\/p>\n

The Mercury took home court from defending champion New York in the second game of their first-round series and clinched it with a win in Game 3 at home.<\/p>\n

Lynx point guard Courtney Williams has 43 points, 16 assists and 15 rebounds in this series. Napheesa Collier, the runner-up in league MVP voting, has 42 points and 15 rebounds.<\/p>\n

Pressured by Alyssa Thomas, Collier missed a 16-footer at the buzzer after the Mercury’s Sami Whitcomb hit a 3-pointer with 4.3 seconds remaining to send Tuesday’s game into overtime.<\/p>\n

“This is what it’s all about,” Thomas said. “You play the whole season for the playoffs and moments like these. I’ve been chasing a championship for a long time. I think this is our time.”<\/p>\n

Thomas, who spent her first 11 seasons with Connecticut, directs Tibbetts’ free-flowing offense from the foul-line extended. The Mercury went small in their comeback Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Thomas, third in MVP voting, led the league with a career-high 9.2 assists per game in the regular season. Williams was second at 6.2. Thomas has eight triple-doubles and is averaging 18.5 points, 10 assists and eight rebounds in the series.<\/p>\n

Phoenix’s Satou Sabally had 24 points, including five 3-pointers, and nine rebounds in Game 2.<\/p>\n

After making 3 of 23 threes in Game 1, the Mercury were 13 of 32 in the second game.<\/p>\n

When ‘Sa’ makes threes, she’s pretty good,” Tibbetts said. “They have a decision to make, right? They are either going to take away the paint or take away threes. It’s really hard to do both.”<\/p>\n

–Field Level Media<\/p>\n

\n Copyright 2025 STATS LLC and Field Level Media. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Field Level Media is strictly prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Phoenix Mercury have turned seizing home-court advantage into their postseason identity. The Mercury gained the upper hand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,736,3461,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-169997","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-minnesota-lynx","11":"tag-phoenix-mercury","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169997","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=169997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}