{"id":698481,"date":"2026-06-11T21:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T21:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/698481\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T21:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T21:46:09","slug":"young-mystics-have-shown-they-can-compete-but-they-can-still-expect-more-growing-pains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/698481\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Mystics have shown they can compete, but they can still expect more growing pains"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Caitlin Clark<\/a>‘s game-winning 3-pointer<\/a> against Washington raised an immediate question: How did a player known for her shooting get so open with the game on the line?<\/p>\n

Call it a rookie mistake or just an aggressive play that didn’t quite work. Either way, it was another learning moment for the Mystics.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou got to do whatever you can until the final buzzer, and we just came up short one possession there,” coach Sydney Johnson said after Monday’s loss<\/a> to Clark’s Indiana Fever<\/a>. “But I couldn’t be prouder of how they acquitted themselves throughout that game. A lot of adversity thrown at us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clark’s shot with 1.2 seconds left<\/a> came after Washington had erased a 17-point second-half deficit to go ahead by one. The crosscourt pass to Clark was in the air for a while, and Cotie McMahon just barely missed what would have been a game-sealing steal. When the ball got through, though, Clark was all alone.<\/p>\n

The finish summed up a Washington team that shows its youth at times, but does not go down easily.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s hard to win in the W, and playing all the way through,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI was incredibly proud of us, in terms of our fight. We’ve had moments where we’re on the ropes, and to see us show that Mystics<\/a> DNA, the togetherness, the toughness. We don’t even get to that moment if we don’t show who we are. So we just showed D.C., the nation, ourselves, just who we are on a day-in and day-out basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Washington has finished above .500 only once since Elena Delle Donne led the Mystics to the 2019 championship. Before last season, the Mystics brought in Johnson as coach and Jamila Wideman as general manager, but Wideman was fired after only one year.<\/p>\n

Washington had a young team in 2024-25 and then doubled down on that approach this season. Only two players on the current roster \u2014 center Shakira Austin<\/a> and forward Michaela Onyenwere<\/a> \u2014 have completed even two WNBA seasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know it was going to be like this, as far as how young we\u2019d be, but I think that having that experience definitely prepared me for this moment,” Onyenwere said. “You don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know, and a lot of our players don\u2019t know a lot about what this league is about. But they\u2019re really really great. Just really good sponges, they want to learn, they want to listen.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are some similarities between the Mystics’ youth movement and what the NBA’s Wizards have done the past few seasons before finally landing the No. 1 pick in the draft this year. But Washington’s WNBA team hasn’t been quite as overwhelmed on the court. The Mystics were just below .500 before dropping their final 10 games a season ago. This season they’re 4-6.<\/p>\n

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Sonia Citron<\/a> and Kiki Iriafen<\/a> were two of the league’s better rookies last season. This year Washington drafted 6-foot-7 Lauren Betts of UCLA with the No. 4 pick. She scored eight points against Indiana and showed good poise inside.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve got 11 out of 13 of our players are in their first or second year in the WNBA. It’s just crazy,” Johnson said. “Super proud of Lauren. She’s going to have more games like that. But what we’re doing here in D.C. is just readying them for this journey, and a night like tonight is just another step toward where we want to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

McMahon was another first-round pick this year, and her all-gas, no-brakes style brings some real energy to the lineup \u2014 even if she wasn’t quite able to break up the pass to Clark.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I might have the best job in the W. It’s just really fulfilling. We know the challenge that’s in front of us. Talk a lot about our youth, our inexperience, but we also talk about our player development, the relationships that we’re building with our players,” Johnson said. “To see that carry over into the games, it’s really fulfilling. We certainly want wins to go along with that, and we’re fighting and scrapping for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP WNBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Caitlin Clark‘s game-winning 3-pointer against Washington raised an immediate question: How did a player known…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[1760,2839,60424,8255,255401,645,648,8254,99,60427,64723,2002,302348,434],"class_list":["post-698481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-caitlin-clark","tag-indiana-fever","tag-jamila-wideman","tag-kiki-iriafen","tag-michaela-onyenwere","tag-mystics","tag-shakira-austin","tag-sonia-citron","tag-sports","tag-sydney-johnson","tag-the-mystics","tag-washington","tag-washington-team","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698481","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=698481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}