MEDLEY, Fla.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Rhyne Howard scored 30 points to lead Vinyl past Laces and into the Unrivaled semifinals on Saturday, while Paige Bueckers\u2019 29 points led Breeze past Rose to secure its semifinal berth.<\/p>\n
The Sparks\u2019 Dearica Hamby hit the game-winning shot against No.3 Laces in Game 1 of the first round of Unrivaled\u2019s playoffs. Once they secured the 82-69 win, player\u2019s from the sixth-ranked Vinyl club \u2014 the last Unrivaled team to clinch a spot in the playoffs \u2014 jumped into Hamby\u2019s arms in celebration. <\/p>\n
Dominique Malonga had 17 rebounds and the game-winning free throw to help Breeze rout Rose, last year\u2019s Unrivaled champion, 69-50 and advance to the next round, which will be played at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Monday night.<\/p>\n
Top-seeded Phantom and No. 2 seed Mist earned automatic berths to Monday\u2019s semifinals.<\/p>\n
The title game will be March 4 at Unrivaled\u2019s home arena in Miami, with a prize pool of $600,000 to be split among players from the championship-winning club.<\/p>\n
Unrivaled announces end-of-season award winners<\/p>\n
Phantom forward Aliyah Boston, who is entering her fourth season with the WNBA\u2019s Indiana Fever, was named Unrivaled\u2019s Defensive Player of the Year on Saturday after emerging as one of the league\u2019s biggest defensive standouts.<\/p>\n
Boston, who was also named to the league\u2019s second-team All-Unrivaled list, led the league with 29 blocks in 14 regular season games and finished second in total defensive rebounds (111). She also led Phantom in rebounds (136) and points off turnovers (39). She averaged 18.9 points, 9.7 rebounds and 2.1 blocked shots per game \u2014 a significant leap from her first Unrivaled season, when she averaged 5.9 points, 5.4 rebounds and 0.4 blocks.<\/p>\n
Boston\u2019s Phantom teammate Kelsey Plum, of the Sparks, was named First Team All-Unrivaled along with Bueckers and Rose guard Chelsea Gray.<\/p>\n
Bueckers led her Breeze club in points (22.1) and assists (5.5) per game and shot 38% from 3-point range this season. Gray, who won Unrivaled\u2019s 1-on-1 tournament earlier this month, had four game-winning baskets and became the first Unrivaled player to surpass 600 points, 200 field goals, and 100 assists.<\/p>\n
Phantom\u2019s Roneeka Hodges was named Coach of the Year after leading her team to a league-best 11-3 record in her first season at Unrivaled.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Phantom will face Vinyl Monday in the first of two semifinal games in Brooklyn. Mist will go against Breeze in the second matchup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEDLEY, Fla.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Rhyne Howard scored 30 points to lead Vinyl past Laces and into the Unrivaled semifinals on Saturday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[20117,62510,98,100,99,6964,26651,62511,1639,9,24,36144,63,62509,33851,23277,20424,62512,62508,3881],"class_list":{"0":"post-149157","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-block","9":"tag-breeze-advance","10":"tag-brooklyn","11":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","12":"tag-brooklyn-news","13":"tag-game","14":"tag-last-year","15":"tag-league","16":"tag-monday-night","17":"tag-new-york","18":"tag-new-york-city","19":"tag-no","20":"tag-nyc","21":"tag-phantom","22":"tag-player","23":"tag-point","24":"tag-rebound","25":"tag-semifinal-berth","26":"tag-unrivaled-semifinal","27":"tag-vinyl"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}