{"id":192177,"date":"2025-10-06T00:08:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T00:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/192177\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T00:08:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T00:08:09","slug":"down-2-0-in-wnba-finals-mercury-need-jolt-with-series-moving-to-phoenix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/192177\/","title":{"rendered":"Down 2-0 in WNBA Finals, Mercury need jolt with series moving to Phoenix"},"content":{"rendered":"

LAS VEGAS \u2014 Phoenix Mercury<\/a> coach Nate Tibbets was critical of his team\u2019s defence after allowing the Las Vegas Aces<\/a> to average 90 points through the first two games of the WNBA Finals.<\/p>\n

Defence isn’t the Mercury’s only problem as they head home.<\/p>\n

Down 2-0 after a\u00a091-78 loss\u00a0on Sunday, Phoenix needs to rediscover its bench and its 3-point touch in Games 3 and 4 at home next week.<\/p>\n

Kahleah Copper finished with 23 points on 50 per cent shooting Sunday, while Satou Sabally had 22 points and Alyssa Thomas scored 10.<\/p>\n

But the rest of the team totalled just 23 points, with only eight coming from the Phoenix reserves.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m super confident in that group, they\u2019ve helped carry us all season long,\u201d Tibbets said. \u201cOur big three has probably got going the most during the playoffs, but I know this is a group that we trust. We believe in each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut again, we\u2019re here because of our defence. And to give up 89 points in Game 1 and 91 in Game 2, I know they\u2019re a really good offensive team … but we have to be better at the defensive end.\u201d<\/p>\n

That part is true, as the Mercury have allowed the Aces to shoot 47.7 per cent (52 of 109) from the floor, including 13 of 37 (35.1 per cent) from 3-point range.<\/p>\n

The Mercury have shot just 40.7 per cent (42 of 103) from the floor since halftime of the series opener, including a bleak 23.4 per cent (11 of 47) from 3-point range.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we weren\u2019t good on both sides of the ball today,\u201d said Thomas, who is averaging 12.5 points in the finals. \u201cThey definitely had our number today. Fortunately for us, it\u2019s best to seven. If it\u2019s best to five, we could be facing elimination. We got to watch the video. We\u2019re going home, we have two home-court advantage games, and we have to be better.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Aces bench outscored Phoenix\u2019s reserves for the second straight game, this time 16-8. Through the first two games, Las Vegas\u2019s reserves have had the dominant scoring differential of plus-33.<\/p>\n

Coming into the WNBA Finals, the Mercury bench ranked second in the post-season with 20 points per game. That\u2019s plummeted to a mere 12 per game in the finals.<\/p>\n

Thomas added she\u2019s confident that someone will provide a spark when the team takes the court for Game 3 on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen it all playoffs long, all season long,\u201d she said. \u201cYeah, we\u2019re not. We\u2019re not worried about that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS \u2014 Phoenix Mercury coach Nate Tibbets was critical of his team\u2019s defence after allowing the Las…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-192177","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\/192177","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=192177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}