LOS ANGELES — In a span of 24 hours, the Las Vegas Aces received their championship rings, suffered a historically bad season-opening loss and then picked up their first win, 105-78 over the Los Angeles Sparks on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like back-to-backs, but this one was kind of nice to just flip the page,\u201d Chelsea Gray said.<\/p>\n
The Aces wouldn\u2019t call Saturday\u2019s 33-point loss to the Phoenix Mercury — the largest margin of defeat by a defending champion in a season opener in WNBA history — extra motivation for the second game of their back-to-back in L.A. It was more of a much-needed palate cleanser.<\/p>\n
And without having any time to dissect the loss in a film session or team meeting, their turnaround game was fueled by basketball instinct and familiarity with each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt plays on our experience and how we have been playing together for a long period of time,\u201d Gray said. \u201cIt\u2019s not like we\u2019re doing things on the back-to-back that we haven\u2019t done before or talked about. But maybe we are then able to sprinkle in some change without actually having to go through it in a meeting or in practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gray likened it to the playoffs, where there isn\u2019t always time to get on the court between games. Learning on the fly, and applying those lessons in real time, is a must.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, this was a quicker turnaround than we\u2019d like, but it was a good test for us early,\u201d Gray said.<\/p>\n
Heading into the game, coach Becky Hammon challenged her starters to set a better tone early, particularly on the defensive end. They answered her challenge, outscoring the Sparks 23-14 in the first period.<\/p>\n
In the second, Vegas built as much as a 17-point lead, but that quickly evaporated as the Aces were held to 13 points in the quarter. They led by just one at halftime.<\/p>\n
In the locker room, Hammon reminded her players to take care of the ball and be prepared for Los Angeles\u2019 blitzes, which she said caused her team to be disrupted.<\/p>\n
This is an area of the game plan Hammon would have gone over in practice if she could have. But with no time, she spent halftime writing concepts on the board and hoping the Aces would execute.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a lot of trust built up, especially with that core group,\u201d Hammon said. \u201cI trust their feel, I trust their character, I trust their competitiveness. So building that trust, it\u2019s there, we just have to reestablish it. … We can be elite when our communication, and our physicality and trust, is there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Aces scored 33 and 30 points, respectively, in the third and fourth quarters. The Sparks didn\u2019t reach 20 points in either period.<\/p>\n
Five Aces finished in double-figure scoring, led by Chennedy Carter\u2019s 22 points off the bench. Jackie Young had 20 points and nine assists, A\u2019ja Wilson had 19 points and two blocks, and Chelsea Gray and NaLyssa Smith contributed 16 and 12 points, respectively.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of conversations and confidence within this group,\u201d Gray said. \u201cThat\u2019s what we fall back on. We fall back on our experience, we fall back on the confidence, the chemistry that we\u2019ve created over the years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES — In a span of 24 hours, the Las Vegas Aces received their championship rings, suffered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,91337,244246,82,630],"class_list":["post-661869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-las-vegas-aces-sports-basketball-team-team-statscom-153","tag-los-angeles-sparks-sports-basketball-team-team-statscom-149","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661869","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=661869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}