COLLEGE PARK, Ga. (AP) \u2014 Rhyne Howard had 24 points, including six 3-pointers, and a career-high six blocks to help the Atlanta Dream secure a playoff spot with a 100-78 victory over the Dallas Wings on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Atlanta, which won the season series with Dallas 3-1, made the playoffs for the 11th time in franchise history. The Dream\u2019s last playoff victory came in 2018.<\/p>\n
Allisha Gray added 19 points, Brionna Jones had 16 points, Te-Hina Paopao 14 and Brittney Griner scored 11 off the bench for Atlanta (25-14). The Dream had 32 assists on their 38 made field goals.<\/p>\n
Maddy Siegrist led Dallas (9-31) with 23 points and rookie Paige Bueckers had 16 points and 10 assists. Myisha Hines-Allen and Amy Okonkwo each scored 11 for the short-handed Wings, who only had eight players available because of injuries.<\/p>\n
Howard scored 14 points in the first half and Gray added 12 as Atlanta led 49-40 at the break. The Dream ended the half by scoring 27 of the final 40 points.<\/p>\n
Siegrist sank a 3-pointer with 3.6 seconds left in the third quarter to pull Dallas within 71-67. But Naz Hillmon made a reverse layup with 7:31 left in the fourth to cap Atlanta\u2019s 10-0 run and make it 81-67.<\/p>\n
Dallas only had nine points in the opening eight minutes of the fourth to trail 94-76.<\/p>\n
The Wings have lost seven straight and dropped to 4-15 on the road this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLLEGE PARK, Ga. (AP) \u2014 Rhyne Howard had 24 points, including six 3-pointers, and a career-high six blocks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-119975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}