PHOENIX \u2014 Satou Sabally scored 23 points \u2014 including 15 in a stellar fourth quarter \u2014 and the Phoenix Mercury beat the top-seeded Minnesota Lynx 84-76 in Game 3 on Friday night to take control of their WNBA playoff semifinals series.<\/p>\n
The Mercury have a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five series and can reach the Finals on Sunday with a win in Game 4 in Phoenix.<\/p>\n
Sabally hit a 3-pointer to give the Mercury a 78-76 lead with 3:05 remaining and added two free throws with 2:01 left to push the advantage to 80-76. Alyssa Thomas had a steal and layup with 21.8 seconds left that sealed the win.<\/p>\n
A furious Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve was ejected following the layup after geting her second technical foul.<\/p>\n
Napheesa Collier also got hurt on the play, rolling her ankle. She had to be helped to the locker room.<\/p>\n
Thomas and Kahleah Copper both scored 21 points, highlighting a balanced Mercury offence. It was a tight game throughout with 15 lead changes.<\/p>\n
Minnesota was led by Natisha Hiedeman’s 19 points off the bench. Collier added 17 points on 8 of 15 shooting while Courtney Williams added 14.<\/p>\n
Minnesota trailed by four at halftime but rallied for a 67-63 lead heading into the fourth quarter. The 5-foot-8 Heideman gave the Lynx a big boost in the final five minutes of the third, scoring eight points.<\/p>\n
The Mercury bounced back from an early deficit, shooting 54.3 % from the field in the first half to take a 48-44 halftime lead. Copper had 17 points before the break on 8 of 9 shooting while Thomas added 11 points and 5 rebounds. Minnesota was led by Collier’s 13 points.<\/p>\n
The Mercury were riding high coming into Game 3 after a 20-point comeback win in Tuesday’s Game 2 that evened the series. It was tied for the third-largest comeback in WNBA playoff history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2014 Satou Sabally scored 23 points \u2014 including 15 in a stellar fourth quarter \u2014 and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-172142","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\/172142","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=172142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}