Lynx head back to Minnesota with improvements needed

The Liberty built a lead by as many as 17 points in the second quarter. Minnesota clawed all the way back with 3:40 left. They couldn’t score again as New York closed out the game with a 12-0 run in front of the largest crowd in Barclays Center history (18,046). 

“Our offense was bad at a time when we really needed it,” Lynx head coach and president of basketball operations Cheryl Reeve said after the game. “Our pace was slow, taking too long to get into things, and I didn’t think we were terribly hard to play against. I’m disappointed that we let it get to 17, I’m more disappointed in that. I’m more than disappointed, I’m pissed that that happened again.”

In a near mirror-image of a first quarter from Game 1, the Lynx had to overcome a double-digit deficet.

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The Liberty built on their dominant, run-and-gun first quarter performance and held the lead in Game 2 wire-to-wire. New York refused to let the Lynx settle in or find any sense of comfort on the offensive end. They scored 26 points off 20 Minnesota turnovers. Seven of those were committed by Collier, matching a career-high in turnovers and the most she’s committed in a single game since the bubble. 

“At the end of the day we’ve got to come out ready to play, man,” Courtney Williams said after the game. “We can’t keep putting ourselves in a hole. Like every time we come out, they hit us in our mouth and then we’re digging ourselves out of a hole. No matter whether we’re here or we’re at home, we can’t do that. Obviously, we’ve got to focus in on that, coming out stronger, and hopefully we get better results back at the crib.”

“Obviously, you want to steal one on the road,” Napheesa Collier said after Game 2. “We’re really disappointed I think in how we played today, but excited to go home and play in front of our crowd, and we have to respond. We have to come out playing better than we did in these two games. It’s hard. Like we are both competing for a championship. You have to play with a level of desperation from the very beginning, and so that’s what we’re going to need to do to come out in Game 3.”

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Reeve referred to Minnesota’s Game 1 as “riddled with mistakes.” The 20 offensive rebounds in Game 1 were a clear factor. But the offense’s woes put pressure on the defense and allowed the Liberty to get into their dangerous transition offense. 

“It was a massive number on the rebounding front, but that was not where I was concerned the most,” Reeve said. “We understand we’ve got to do that, but we also understand if there’s one metric that we aren’t good at, that’s one of them. You can’t suddenly, I preach this, as you get to the postseason you can’t suddenly change who you are. You are who you are. We’ve got to clean it up a little bit and continue to take advantage of it, I mean that’s not news to anybody.”

The Lynx will try to get back to who they are over the next two games on their home floor. Minnesota has lost back-to-back games twice in 2024.

“We know that they’re going to come out and play hard and try and make things tough, but like I said, we have to be more prepared,” Williams said. “I think it’s us. We have to look within and be able to come out and play better with a sense of urgency. It just felt like we had no sense of urgency, like they were just going to let us win. Like, they’re trying to win too. So we’ve got to be able to match that energy. We don’t sugarcoat anything in our locker room. We have to have a sense of urgency. So we’re going to go back to the drawing board and we’re going to do what we can do.”