PHOENIX (AP) \u2014 Angel Reese scored a career-high 31 points and grabbed 14 rebounds for her 25th double-double of the season and the Atlanta Dream clinched a playoff berth with a 99-89 win over the Phoenix Mercury on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Rhyne Howard added 20 points, Allisha Gray had 17 and Jordin Canada 12 for the Dream (24-13), who have won five of their last six games. They moved a half-game ahead of Indiana, which lost earlier in night, for the fourth seed, with seven games to go for Atlanta.<\/p>\n
Kahleah Copper had 38 points for the Mercury (13-24), who were in the WNBA Finals last season, but were eliminated from the playoff chase with the loss.<\/p>\n
Alyssa Thomas had her 22nd regular-season triple-double with 11 points, 16 rebounds and 10 assists. Thomas also has six triple-doubles in the playoffs. DeWanna Bonner added 12 points.<\/p>\n
Reese, a 43% shooter for the season, was 14 of 21 from the field after going 9 of 9 the previous game. Her previous career high for points was 27 in 2024 when she was a rookie with Chicago. She has set the Atlanta single-season record for double-doubles and is three shy of the league record.<\/p>\n
Howard hit four 3-pointers as the Dream led 14-3 less than four minutes into the game. Atlanta led 29-18 after one quarter and 50-35 at the half.<\/p>\n
With Copper scoring 17 points in the third quarter the Mercury got within one point before the Dream took a 73-68 lead into the fourth quarter. Phoenix made 13 of 22 shots in the third quarter after making just 10 of 29 in the first half. <\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Dream: Finish a four-game West Coast road trip at Los Angeles on Monday.<\/p>\n
Mercury: Home against Washington on Tuesday and Thursday.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP WNBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball<\/p>\n
The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (AP) \u2014 Angel Reese scored a career-high 31 points and grabbed 14 rebounds for her 25th double-double…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-868352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868352","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=868352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}