While Dallas had played in the arena twice last season, it got its first win downtown on Sunday. A crowd of 13,236 watched the Wings pull off a double-digit comeback to complete a season sweep of the Sky.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s huge,\u201d Dallas head coach Jose Fernandez said postgame of the crowd\u2019s impact. \u201cI thought in the fourth quarter, you can feel the energy\u2026 If we have a home crowd like that in this building, it\u2019s special, and then your players feed off of that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The late-game heroics the downtown audience experienced have been commonplace for the 16-8 Wings this season. They\u2019ve trailed by double-digits in all three games against Chicago before coming back to win. They\u2019ve trailed in the fourth quarter of half of their wins this season as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dallas doesn\u2019t want to have to make late pushes as often, but star guard Paige Bueckers<\/a> praised the team\u2019s \u201csense of urgency.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a habit for us to do that in the fourth, and it\u2019s something that like we need to change and play that way starting at the at the tip at the start of the 40 minutes,\u201d Bueckers said. \u201cBut we collectively lock in, are on the same page offensively, defensively, and what we want to execute, and we just really hone in on the details.\u201d<\/p>\n Bueckers has been the centerpiece of the come-from-behind efforts, leading the WNBA in fourth-quarter scoring this season.\u00a0In the series finale against the Sky, she had eight points and five assists in the final period of play, finishing with a 22-point, 11-assist double-double. <\/p>\n Rep The IX Sports at your next game! <\/p>\n Shop the logo collection or special \u201cWomen\u2019s Sports are Front Page News\u201d collection now on Shopify.<\/p>\n She was far from the only one making plays late, however. Despite an overall poor shooting night, rookie Azzi Fudd<\/a> hit two threes in the fourth quarter, the second a game-tying triple to end Chicago\u2019s time in the lead for good. On the next defensive possession, an emphatic block by Fudd forced a jump ball before the Wings eventually came up with a stop. <\/p>\n Jessica Shepard<\/a> and Li Yueru<\/a> both had double-doubles, the latter a key force in slowing down Sky center Kamilla Cardoso<\/a>. Six of Arike Ogunbowale\u2019s<\/a> 17 points came in the final 2:20 of game time, along with a key steal with a minute left. <\/p>\n \u201cI thought they did a very good job executing coming out of the fourth quarter and in late-game situations,\u201d Fernandez said. \u201c\u2026 Everybody played and had a significant piece to this victory.\u201d<\/p>\n It all added up to Dallas\u2019 fifth straight win, and its first ever in American Airlines Center. It played two games at the venue last year against the Indiana Fever, losing both. <\/p>\n Those 2025 games against a high-profile opponent drew notably larger crowds, but Sunday\u2019s environment was respectable for a team which might make the building its first downtown home. The game\u2019s attendance mark would rank fifth in the WNBA if averaged across a full season, just ahead of the Los Angeles Sparks\u2019 12,505 average. <\/p>\n Listen now to The IX Sports Podcast and Women\u2019s Sports Daily Fernandez, who was first to say the team would play the 2027 season at AAC before Wings CEO Greg Bibb clarified that the franchise is merely in \u201cadvanced\u201d talks to do so, kept things light-hearted and cautious when asked questions Sunday about the atmosphere. His focus will be on leading the team to wins wherever home is.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re both great environments,\u201d Fernandez said. \u201cI think CPC has been a really good home court advantage, right? This building just holds a lot more people.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS, TX \u2014 After a four-game road trip, the Dallas Wings didn\u2019t return to their usual home. Instead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2485,33395,131794,102,104,103,14421,15438,14446],"class_list":["post-372109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-american-airlines-center","tag-azzi-fudd","tag-college-park-center","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-dallas-wings","tag-jose-fernandez","tag-paige-bueckers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/unisex-premium-sweatshirt-black-zoomed-in-69d805eea2e49-1024x1024.webp\")
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