Minnesota Lynx are ready for ‘knock-down, drag-out’ semifinals against Connecticut Sun

“Yeah, we knew we would be here, though,” Lynx lead guard Courtney Williams told reporters after practice on Friday when asked about the skepticism her team faced in the preseason. “I think we felt it in training camp. I think our chemistry and the way we played, I think we felt it then and everybody else is just waking up to it.”

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Much like their semifinal opponent, the No. 3 seed Connecticut Sun, the foundation of the Lynx’s success this season is their defense. This side of the bracket pits the WNBA’s toughest defenses against each other in what promises to be a rock fight.

“It’s going to be maybe very different than what we saw in the first round for both teams,” Reeve told reporters on Friday. “The knock-down, drag-out nature of the series this season [between us and Connecticut] is probably what you’re going to see throughout the course of the 200 minutes of this series.

“It should be hard for either team to get separation in a game. It will be hard physically on both of us. I wish I could sit here and tell you exactly what we’re going to get out of some of our offensive actions, but you don’t have any idea. Everything’s going to be so hard.”

Perhaps no team in the WNBA embodies making things hard more than the Sun. They’ve been in the top two in defensive rating in each of the last four seasons. No other team forced more turnovers in 2024 (15.0 per game). Head coach Stephanie White was the 2023 WNBA Coach of the Year. Solving the Sun challenges a team’s mental and physical aptitude. 

When asked what Connecticut does better than anyone else in the league, Reeve said, “It’s more the physical toughness. It’s not even really about a game plan; it’s the physical toughness in moments where they do some unscripted things defensively because they’re very good defensive players and they’re led by the leader of their physical toughness in Alyssa Thomas. …

“It’s why they’ve been successful for a long time. They’ve been able to win with their defense, and it’s hard to play against.”

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Minnesota went 1-2 against the Sun in the regular season. All three games were close, with an average margin of just 2.7 points. The Lynx got their breakthrough in the final road game of the season, a thrilling 78-76 win punctuated by a deep Bridget Carleton 3-pointer with 3.4 seconds left. 

The Sun got the victory in their lone trip to Target Center, beating the Lynx 78-73 on July 4. Thomas, Connecticut’s star forward, put up a triple-double with 13 points, 14 assists and 10 rebounds. Lynx star Napheesa Collier left the game early with aggravated plantar fascia and missed the ensuing five games.

And back on May 23, an overtime thriller that ended in an 83-82 Connecticut win got the regular-season series started. 

The Sun also sent the Lynx home from the playoffs in 2023, winning a decisive Game 3 at Target Center. Minnesota had bounced back from a Game 1 blowout to steal a game on the road and force the series back to Minneapolis.

“We just weren’t able to overcome them,” Reeve said when asked what she took away from the 2023 series. “This team is different. We’re a far better offensive team than last year’s team. I go back sometimes and watch that and I go, ‘How? How were we 40 minutes from being in the semifinals?’ This [Sun] team poses a lot of challenges. … Those pick-sixes they create are really, really impressive.”

Of all the opponents the Sun’s defense tormented this season, the Lynx did pose some challenges. Across the three regular-season meetings, Minnesota had the best field goal percentage and the second-best effective field goal percentage of any Sun opponent.

In the September win against the Sun, the Lynx limited their turnovers to 13. Across the two losses, they turned the ball over 35 times. To taste the Finals for the first time since 2017, protecting the ball is a good place for the Lynx to start.

Another thing in the Lynx’s favor, as ever, is the play of Collier. Despite leaving the second regular-season game against Connecticut due to injury, some of the MVP-runner-up’s most impressive numbers this season have come against the No. 1 defense in the league. Across the three games, Collier shot 58.3% from the field (her highest percentage against any team) while averaging 21.7 points and 7.7 rebounds.  

“I think the emphasis was on playing in movement,” Collier told reporters after the win in Connecticut on Sept. 17. “They’re obviously really strong in the posts, so not to battle in there too much, but to get them moving and dribble it out to our guards. And I think we executed that pretty well.”

Collier rolls into the semifinals on the heels of some of the best basketball of her career. It won’t be easy to keep it rolling against the likes of Thomas, DeWanna Bonner, WNBA Most Improved Player DiJonai Carrington, Tyasha Harris, Brionna Jones, Marina Mabrey and more, but the Lynx are ready for the battle. 

“What you expect is that back-and-forth,” Reeve said on Sept. 17. “You’ve got two good teams with really good players on both sides, and that’s what you expect. You don’t expect that just because a team is down, especially at home, that they’re going to stop playing.” 

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Another trademark of the Lynx’s season is that, no matter what kind of adversity a game brings, the Lynx do not panic. They didn’t panic when the Mercury erased a 23-point lead in Game 1 of the playoffs, and they didn’t panic in Connecticut when the Sun erased a 7-point Lynx advantage to take a late lead. 

“I just like where we are as a team,” Minnesota co-captain Kayla McBride said after the win in Connecticut. “Our connection in the huddles through the ebbs and flows of the game, staying connected, I think has been a testament to where we are now and problem-solving together. It’s never anybody pointing fingers. Everybody’s very unselfish.

“We’re all here for the same mission, which is to go out and win each and every game that we play. That becomes a lot of fun, because then you’re just competing your asses off for 40 minutes and hopefully you come out on top.”