The Toronto Tempo faced an Atlanta Dream team on Sunday that has its eyes on a championship, and proved to be a tough test. While the Tempo got off to a hot start, growing tensions between Tempo forward Isabelle Harrison and Dream All-Star Angel Reese resulted in a flagrant 2 foul and an ejection for Harrison. She left the game in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought Izzy was playing so well for us, and she was a big target,\u201d head coach Brondello said after the game. \u201cI thought she did a great job on Angel Reese, and that\u2019s a hard guard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before being ejected, Harrison was the leading scorer for the Tempo, with 17 points in 19 minutes of play. At the time, she was also the only Tempo player who had scored 10 or more points. In the end, the Tempo fell 102-77 to Atlanta.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The Dream] lifted the intensity up and their aggressiveness kind of took us out of what we needed to do, but yeah, losing Izzy obviously hurt,\u201d Brondello said.<\/p>\n
The Tempo were also down another frontcourt player as center Nyara Sabally was a late scratch from the game. Sabally tweaked her hamstring during the Tempo\u2019s overtime win against the Connecticut Sun, missing Friday\u2019s game in Washington. She warmed up for Sunday\u2019s game, but was ultimately ruled out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a long season,\u201d Brondello said on Sabally\u2019s prognosis. \u201cIt\u2019s a marathon, not a sprint, but [Sabally]\u2019s been so good for us. She\u2019s an impact player for us, so losing her\u2026 it\u2019s hard for us.<\/p>\n
\u201cStill, we want to make sure she\u2019s 100 per cent.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Sabally and then eventually Harrison out for the Tempo, the duties under the rim fell to Temi Fagbenle. Sunday was Fagbenle\u2019s second game back with the team after a shoulder injury sustained on May 8 kept her sidelined. Still on a minutes restriction, Fagbenle played 17 minutes \u2013 up from the eight minutes she played against Washington.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019ve been out for a while, you just need time,\u201d Brondello said about Fagbenle\u2019s ramp-up. \u201cIt\u2019s not about perfection right now, it\u2019s just about getting confident in the shoulder, and then playing, letting the adrenaline take over from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Putting this loss in the rearview mirror, the Tempo will now head out on a three-game road trip over the next week. They will start in Indiana to play Caitlin Clark and the Fever before making stops in Connecticut and Atlanta.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust trying to have consistent effort and execution for as long a period as we can, but staying in the moment, not getting too high, too low,\u201d Brondello said of her team\u2019s goals for this next stretch. \u201cI think sometimes the emotions get the best of us, and take away from how we want to play, but they\u2019re all controllable.\u201d <\/p>\n
While Tuesday\u2019s game is their last of the Commissioner\u2019s Cup tournament, the Tempo have already been mathematically eliminated from making the final. The New York Liberty will be representing the Eastern Conference to try and win the tournament. Still, the Tempo have another opportunity to make money for Lay-Up Basketball, their local charity partner for the WNBA\u2019s in-season tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love going on the road. It\u2019s an opportunity for us to continue to grow together, bond together,\u201d Brondello continued. \u201c[We will be] playing really good teams, and hopefully [get to] continue to show more of our identity as we go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toronto Tempo faced an Atlanta Dream team on Sunday that has its eyes on a championship, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[712,223845,49,48,82,243298,630],"class_list":["post-737290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-apple-news","tag-atlanta-dream-sports-basketball-team-team-statscom-8406","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-toronto-tempo-sports-basketball-team-team-statscom-45513","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737290","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=737290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}