PHOENIX — A different coach took questions in the Lynx’s pregame news conference ahead of Sunday night’s must-win Game 4 of the WNBA semifinals. But the message was a familiar one: “You find out what you’re made of in situations like these.”
Those words came from associate head coach Eric Thibault, not head coach Cheryl Reeve.
Now the Lynx are without both Reeve and Collier, ruled out with a left ankle injury, in Game 4, down 2-1 in the best-of-five WNBA semifinal series. Thibault, who joined the Lynx this past offseason, will step into head coaching duties in place of Reeve for Game 4 (7 p.m., ESPN).
When asked about managing the team’s emotions after Game 3, Thibault said: “You have the most success in these situations when you control what you can control. For us, that’s playing better, playing through exhaustion, playing until the tank is empty, and being sharper in execution on both ends of the floor.”
Thibault isn’t a stranger to calling the shots. Before joining Minnesota, Thibault spent 12 seasons with the Washington Mystics, the last two as head coach with a 33-47 record. He helped Washington reach back-to-back WNBA Finals in 2018 and 2019, including winning a title on the second trip.
The Lynx also aren’t strangers to playing without Collier this season. The MVP runner-up missed 11 of the team’s 44 regular-season games, with forward Jessica Shepard typically taking her place in Minnesota’s starting lineup.
“I don’t know if you spend a ton of time talking about how we’re going to play differently [without Collier], or how we played then,” Thibault said. “People will have been through that, the experience that our team has, going through that in some pretty important games at the time.”