Lynx Look For Consistency Against Fever


The Associated Press

The Minnesota Lynx will be looking to avenge a rare loss to the Indiana Fever when the two teams square off in a Kids Day matinee contest on Wednesday at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in downtown Indianapolis.

The Lynx had won seven games in a row until Indiana surprised them 71-59 on July 3 in Minneapolis, in the process keeping Minnesota under 60 points on its home floor for the first time since 2010.

In the week since that game, Minnesota beat Los Angeles in a rematch of last year’s WNBA championship series and then fell on the road to Chicago 77-63.

Maya Moore led the Lynx (11-8) with 16 points in the loss to Chicago but needed 16 shots to reach that total. Seimone Augustus had 11 points while Sylvia Fowles, playing against her former team, had nine points and 13 rebounds for Minnesota, which shot 35.5 percent from the floor and was 5 of 18 on shots from beyond the arc.

It’s been an inconsistent season for the Lynx, something they are not used to and definitely won’t accept.

“When you don’t pay attention to detail on both ends of the floor, you’re very up and down,” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “Sometimes you set a good screen, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you take a good shot, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you play the schemes, sometimes you don’t. That leads to very up and down.”

Indiana, meanwhile, would love to have the 11 wins that the Lynx have. The Fever (2-17) have just two victories on the season, one each at home and on the road, and laid its biggest egg of the year just two days after pulling off the upset of Minnesota, losing 90-63 at Dallas.

The Wings outrebounded Indiana 47-22 in Thursday’s game, and handed the Fever a 27-point defeat, the club’s worst of the season.

“It is difficult to win a basketball game when the rebound margin is minus-25,” said Fever coach Pokey Chatman.

Indiana got 42 of its 63 points from veterans Candice Dupree, Cappie Pondexter and Natalie Achonwa in the loss to Dallas, as that trio shot 16 of 31 from the floor while the rest of the Fever team combined for 8-of-37 shooting.

“Our defense wasn’t there,” Dupree said after the loss to the Wings. “They beat us on the boards, they turned us over and they scored a lot of points. They had an attack mentality.”

Since the Fever played in Minneapolis on July 3, Lynx forward Rebekkah Brunson passed former Fever great Tamika Catchings as the WNBA’s all-time rebounding leader.

Minnesota leads the overall series between the two teams 23-14 and but for the loss last Tuesday at Target Center, has dominated regular-season meetings since 2012. The Lynx have won 14 of the past 16 regular-season games since July 15, 2011.

Kids Day has annually produced some of the Fever’s best attendance figures, including last season’s crowd of 12,282, the largest in club history. The Fever and Lynx share home-and-road Kids Day appearances on Wednesday in Indianapolis and July 18 in Minneapolis.