ARLINGTON, TX \u2014 It\u2019s usually safe to expect fireworks when the Dallas Wings (17-8) square off against the Los Angeles Sparks (10-15), and they erupted late on Sunday once again, despite the Sparks being without Kelsey Plum, the WNBA\u2019s second-leading scorer.<\/p>\n
In Plum\u2019s absence, the Sparks couldn\u2019t manufacture enough offense to stay with the Wings down the stretch at College Park Center. Bueckers led the Wings with 25 points no 10-of-18 shooting and five assists in Dallas\u2019 90-82 win, but was knocked out of the game by a collision with Nneka Ogwumike with 3:33 left to play, when she hit her head on the hardwood. Arike Ogunbowale scored five of her 20 points in the game\u2019s final minute to help preserve the win in Bueckers\u2019 absence. Ogwumike led the Sparks with 17 points in the win.<\/p>\n
The Wings now hold a six-game winning streak, the longest in team history since moving to Dallas in 2016. It was their 10th clutch win of the season, the most of any team in the W.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see the growth,\u201d said Odyssey Sims, who had seven points off the bench, including one of the biggest buckets of the game down the stretch. \u201cWe haven\u2019t been panicking. We know what to do. It\u2019s almost like we\u2019ve been here before.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Wings weren\u2019t firing on all cylinders in the first quarter, though, until Azzi Fudd came off a screen on an inbound play for her first 3-pointer of the game, then curled off another screen the next time down six minutes into the game for her second, which put Dallas up 15-8. After the Sparks missed their first five 3-point attempts to open the game, Chance Grey responded with one of her own after Fudd\u2019s second to make it 15-11.<\/p>\n
Back-to-back three-point plays from Odyssey Sims and Aziaha James late in the first gave the Wings a 25-17 lead, and Paige Bueckers nailed a baseline jumper with just seconds left in the frame to give Dallas a 27-17 advantage after one.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Sims] gave us some really good minutes,\u201d Wings head coach Jose Fernandez said. \u201cFrom a playmaking standpoint, and knowing where to get to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Awak Kuier picked up her third foul of the game with 8:05 left in the second quarter, and with the Wings already without Alanna Smith due to a leg injury, that meant extended minutes for Alysha Clark beside Jessica Shepard. Arike Ogunbowale bailed the Wings out on a couple of possessions midway through the second when she banked home a 3-pointer from the left wing, then drove through traffic in the lane for a tough two the next time down to give Dallas a 34-27 lead.<\/p>\n
Bueckers put Ariel Atkins on skates with 4:30 left in the half and stepped back for her first 3-ball of the game, then completed the four-point play to give the Wings a 40-29 lead when Atkins got into her landing space on the way down. Bueckers led Dallas with 12 points and three assists in the first half, but the Wings turned the ball over four times in the last five minutes of the first half and limped into the locker room with a 46-40 lead.<\/p>\n
Dallas turned the ball over three more times in the first four minutes of the third, as Los Angeles cut the Wings\u2019 lead to one, 50-49, after Rae Burrell\u2019s driving reverse layup three minutes into the second half. Kuier picked up her fourth foul, a transition take foul, early in the third, forcing the Wings to once again go smaller. The Sparks took their first lead of the game, 53-52, on another Burrell drive, this time past Fudd, two minutes later.<\/p>\n
The Wings got the wheels back on the bus in the final minutes of the third quarter and took a 68-63 lead into the decisive fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Without Plum in the lineup, Sunday\u2019s game was an opportunity to put away a struggling team and rest some key players on the front end of the back-to-back set of games thrust upon the Wings when the New York Liberty\u2019s plane had trouble leaving town on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The Sparks came into Sunday\u2019s game having lost their last three and six of their last eight. Plum was injured her left leg in late June and was expected to be reevaluated after four weeks.<\/p>\n
The Wings compounded their mistake late in the first half by letting the Sparks come out of halftime as the clear aggressors. But throughout the afternoon, the Wings limited the Sparks\u2019 effectiveness from the perimeter enough to offset LA\u2019s advantages underneath.<\/p>\n
The Sparks stuck around in large part due to their matchup advantages on the interior. Nneka Ogwumike, Cameron Brink and Dearica Hamby used the screen game to get a guard switched onto them, then forced them into the post, where Los Angeles was able to score easy buckets or get to the free throw line.<\/p>\n
Wings head coach Jose Fernandez opted for Clark and a smaller lineup when Kuier got into foul trouble, until he finally put Li Yueru into the game late in the third quarter. She played the pick-and-roll game perfectly with Fudd late in the third quarter, earning a trip to the line and a three-point play with 1:40 left to extend what was then a 64-58 lead.<\/p>\n
Cameron Brink swatted a pair of shots, including a driving attempt from Bueckers, and nailed a 3-pointer as Yueru was slow to get out on her, in the final minute of the third quarter, to cut it to 64-61.<\/p>\n
Bueckers made her first clutch play of the game before the fourth quarter even started. She knew, with just seconds left in the third, that if she could just get Brink up in the air after a switch, she could get to the free throw line with a second or less on the clock. She threw a pump fake and leaned in to extend Dallas\u2019 lead to five points headed into a hotly contested fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Then Bueckers put her fourth-quarter game face on. She pulled up for her second 3-pointer of the game just a minute into the frame to put her at 19 points for the game and give the Wings a 71-63 advantage. Two minutes later, she flashed down the lane after Fudd pulled down an offensive rebound, and Shepard found her on the cut for another bucket to make it 74-68. She used a Yueru screen with six minutes left to play to slide past Brink, who had blocked her shot on a similar drive earlier, for a fading bucket to make it 78-72 and force a Sparks timeout.<\/p>\n
Bueckers came off another Yueru screen with 4:45 left and pulled up for another perimeter jumper to keep the Sparks at arm\u2019s length, 80-74. Those were her eighth and ninth points of the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Bueckers had to be taken to the locker room after hitting her head on the hardwood following a car crash with Ogwumike with 3:33 left to play. Her teammates immediately picked up the slack after Bueckers\u2019 shooting and craftiness steadied the ship earlier in the fourth.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously we needed a bucket to kind of seal the game,\u201d Sims said. \u201cIt just so happened I was able to get downhill. Just pushing pace and staying locked in defensively at the end of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shepard took a steal on a bad pass from Burrell and found Sims for a transition basket with 3:08 to play. After Atkins hit a 3-ball for LA on the other end, Shepard came right back and drove for another bucket to put the Wings ahead 86-79 with 1:59 left.<\/p>\n
Ogunbowale stepped back with Brink\u2019s hand in her face as the seconds ticked down and sunk a long clutch two-pointer to make it 88-82, before driving for another bucket with 20 seconds left to give Dallas a 90-82 lead. She shot 7-for-13 from the field in the win.<\/p>\n
\u201cArike was really assertive down the stretch,\u201d Fernandez said. \u201cHer driving and getting to the basket was big. I thought she was efficient today as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON, TX \u2014 It\u2019s usually safe to expect fireworks when the Dallas Wings (17-8) square off against the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[116505,48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-404633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-dallas-wings","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}