COLLEGE PARK, Ga. \u2014 Rhyne Howard scored 18 points, Allisha Gray added 15, and Atlanta beat the Connecticut Sun, 87-62, on Monday night, giving the Dream\u2019s Karl Smesko a WNBA-record 29 wins, the most by a first-year coach.<\/p>\n
Atlanta (29-14), which won its fifth straight game, moved past Last Vegas (28-14) for sole possession of second place. The Dream close the regular season on Wednesday at Connecticut.<\/p>\n
Atlanta led 45-40 late in the first half before Saniya Rivers banked in a long 3-pointer for Connecticut just before the halftime buzzer. The Dream\u2019s lead was just 52-49 with 5:56 left in the third quarter before closing on a 16-3 run for a 16-point advantage. <\/p>\n
The Sun scored nine points in the third and 10 in the fourth.<\/p>\n
Naz Hillmon had 14 points, five rebounds, four assists, and four steals for Atlanta. Maya Caldwell added 11 points and Brittney Griner scored 10.<\/p>\n
Rivers scored 16 points, Aneesah Morrow had 13 points and 14 rebounds, and Tina Charles scored 12 for Connecticut (11-32), which dropped to 4-18 on the road this season. <\/p>\n
Rivers made two 3-pointers in the first half to set Connecticut\u2019s rookie record with 42 3-pointers in a season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLLEGE PARK, Ga. \u2014 Rhyne Howard scored 18 points, Allisha Gray added 15, and Atlanta beat the Connecticut…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[3444,89236,402,56606,89233,293,78565,89235,16898,308,18418,56613,1999,89234,688,1079,99,24,434,2088],"class_list":["post-143511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-atlanta-dream","tag-barclays-center-brooklyn","tag-basketball","tag-basketball-sport","tag-brooklyn-new-york","tag-color-image","tag-facial-expression","tag-first-half-sport","tag-head-coach","tag-horizontal","tag-karl-smesko","tag-match-sport","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-liberty-basketball-team","tag-photography","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-usa","tag-wnba","tag-womens-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143511","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=143511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}