{"id":272457,"date":"2026-06-20T03:06:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T03:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/272457\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T03:06:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T03:06:23","slug":"a-young-mystics-team-stuns-the-liberty-86-83-snapping-new-yorks-8-game-streak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/272457\/","title":{"rendered":"A young Mystics team stuns the Liberty 86-83, snapping New York\u2019s 8-game streak"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Mystics are the youngest team in WNBA history, but are growing up fast.<\/p>\n


\n Washington Mystics players react on the floor during the second half of the game against the New York Liberty at Barclays Center on June 19, 2026 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Photo by Michelle Farsi\/Getty Images)(Getty Images\/Michelle Farsi)<\/p>\n


\n Washington Mystics players react on the floor during the second half of the game against the New York Liberty at Barclays Center on June 19, 2026 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Photo by Michelle Farsi\/Getty Images)(Getty Images\/Michelle Farsi)<\/p>\n

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The Washington Mystics are the youngest team in WNBA<\/a> history, but are growing up fast.<\/p>\n

Washington snapped New York\u2019s eight-game winning streak, stunning the Liberty 86-83<\/a> on Friday night. It ended a 10-game regular-season losing streak to New York dating to 2023.<\/p>\n

It was the second time in the past few games that Washington was able to close out a team in the final seconds, thanks in huge part to the play of second-year players Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen. Iriafen returned to the lineup after missing the last few games with a sprained ankle.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuge signs of growth,\u201d coach Sydney Johnson said. \u201cWe lost a heartbreaker against Indiana. (Caitlin) Clark made a huge shot \u2014 big time play there. We are trying to find ways where we can get better. \u2026 Part of this journey we\u2019re on together. I\u2019m proud of them. We applied some of the things we learned.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York went up eight in the fourth quarter before Iriafen led the comeback, scoring nine points in the final four minutes, including the go-ahead basket with 27 seconds left.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this one was huge for us,\u201d Iriafen said. \u201cGiven we played the Liberty last week and we didn\u2019t play up to our standards. We know they are a great team, but again we have so much fight and we think we can beat anyone, regardless of who they have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Washington is slightly younger than the 2020 New York team that had an average age of just over 24 years old according to the website \u201cAcross the Timeline.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mystics are back to .500. They haven\u2019t finished above that mark since Elena Delle Donne led the team to a championship in 2019.<\/p>\n

Citron feels the Mystics are close to being one of the top teams in the league, but need to do it on a nightly basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think right now we\u2019re just trying to prove that we can be consistent and deliver this kind of game on a consistent basis,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re just trying to take it game-by-game and get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP WNBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball<\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright
\n \u00a9\u00a02026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Washington Mystics are the youngest team in WNBA history, but are growing up fast. Washington Mystics players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,8915,10,27376],"class_list":["post-272457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-liberty","tag-new-york-news","tag-washington-mystics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272457","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=272457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}