{"id":414834,"date":"2026-01-17T07:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T07:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/414834\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T07:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T07:23:09","slug":"unrivaled-brittney-sykes-3-pointer-gives-lace-76-75-win-hive-gets-1st-victory-on-kelsey-mitchell-layup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/414834\/","title":{"rendered":"Unrivaled: Brittney Sykes’ 3-pointer gives Lace 76-75 win, Hive gets 1st victory on Kelsey Mitchell layup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brittney Sykes hit a 3-pointer to give Lace a 76-75 win over Phantom in Unrivaled play on Friday night. The 3-pointer hit the target score of 76 after Lace took a 65-60 lead at the end of the third quarter on a 2-point free throw by Jordin Canada.<\/p>\n

Lace ran out to a 27-18 lead after the first quarter, giving Phantom a large deficit to overcome. They trimmed the margin to 47-43 at halftime, but Lace kept Phantom at a five-point margin at the end of three frames.<\/p>\n

However, Phantom took a 69-67 lead in the fourth with Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Plum leading the surge. A layup by Boston gave Phantom a 73-70 lead and with 76 the target score to win, it appeared that they would pull off a comeback win. But Jackie Young responded with a layup and free throw to tie the score at 73-73.<\/p>\n

Boston followed up with another layup to put Phantom on top, 75-73. She scored the team’s final five points. But at one point away from reaching 76, that gave Sykes an opportunity to take a 3-pointer for the win.<\/p>\n

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Plum led all scorers with 25 points for Phantom, adding 6 rebounds and 7 assists. She came into Friday’s game as Unrivaled’s fourth-leading scorer, averaging 23.3 points per game. Boston followed with 23 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 blocks, while Kiki Iriafen scored 10 points.<\/p>\n

Alyssa Thomas was Lace’s leading scorer with 19 points, along with 6 rebounds and 4 assists. Sykes finished with 17 points, coming into the game as Unrivaled’s fifth-best scorer at 22.5 points per game. Young also scored 17.<\/p>\n

With the win, Lace improves to 3-1 after going 7-7 to finish third in the league last season. Phantom drops to 2-2, improving thus far on last year’s 4-10 record.<\/p>\n

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Hive gets first-ever Unrivaled win<\/p>\n

Unrivaled added two new teams this season<\/a> with Hive and Breeze. While Breeze is off to a 2-1 start in its inaugural season, Hive looked like an expansion team by struggling to an 0-3 start. But they earned their first win of the season on Friday.<\/p>\n

Kelsey Mitchell’s layup lifted Hive to a 78-75 win over Rose, pushing the team past the winning target score of 77 established with a 66-54 lead after three quarters.<\/p>\n

Rose outscored Hive 15-7 to begin the fourth quarter, closing the score to 72-69 on consecutive 3-pointers by Chelsea Gray. But layups by Mitchell and Monique Billings put Hive one point away from the win. Kahleah Copper then hit a 3 to give Rose an opportunity to win on its next possession.<\/p>\n

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However, they didn’t get that chance with Hive calling timeout and setting up the game-winner. Mitchell inbounded the ball, then took a handoff from Billings, who set a screen to clear a path to the basket. The eighth-year pro drove to her left and dashed past Azura Stevens to get Hive over 77 points.<\/p>\n

Mitchell finished with 24 points, shooting 11-for-17 from the floor. Billings added 12 points and 10 rebounds, while Sonia Citron scored 14 points. Gray led all scorers with 36 points with 7 assists for Rose, hitting 6-of-9 3-pointers. She came into Friday’s game as Unrivaled’s leading scorer, averaging 32.8 points per game. Stevens followed with 17 points and 9 boards.<\/p>\n

The defeat dropped Rose to 3-1, tying them with Lace for the league’s top record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brittney Sykes hit a 3-pointer to give Lace a 76-75 win over Phantom in Unrivaled play on Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[4655,4652,38382,6738,49,48,12199,4661,24809,12202,4650,631,4654,174369,40801,4649,82,174370,4646,630],"class_list":["post-414834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-aliyah-boston","tag-alyssa-thomas","tag-azura-stevens","tag-brittney-sykes","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chelsea-gray","tag-jackie-young","tag-jordin-canada","tag-kahleah-copper","tag-kelsey-mitchell","tag-kelsey-plum","tag-kiki-iriafen","tag-lace","tag-monique-billings","tag-sonia-citron","tag-sports","tag-target-score","tag-unrivaled","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414834","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=414834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}