Lynx Notes

• Minnesota announced its first sellout of the season (13,032) back at Target Center for the first time since the end of the 2016 season.
• Lindsay Whalen led the Lynx in scoring and assists with 17 points and a game-high nine assists, just one assist shy of recording her first double-double of the season. Whalen shot 5-of-8 from the field, while also collecting two rebounds. With six free throws made today, she is now 16 free throws away from being eighth all-time (Jackson 1391).
• Sylvia Fowles a double-double tonight (128th career) with 15 points on 6-of-10 shooting and gathered a game-high 12 rebounds. Fowles had 20 double-doubles in the 2017 season.
• Rebekkah Brunson added 15 points on 5-of-6 shooting and nine rebounds. She now needs 17 points to record 4,000 WNBA career points and just two rebounds for 2,000 boards as a Lynx.
• Maya Moore recorded her first double-digit effort of the season with 11 points, she filled the box score with seven rebounds, two assists and one steal.
• The Lynx outrebounded the Sparks 41-25 in tonight’s loss.
• Minnesota tallied 24 turnovers, recording two more turnovers than last season’s high of 22 (vs. Connecticut on May 23, 2017).
• The Lynx host the Dallas Wings on Wednesday, May 23 at Target Center. Tip is set for 7 p.m. CT. The game will be televised on Fox Sports North and can be heard on BOB 106 FM.

Sparks Notes

• Chelsea Gray hit the game winner with 0.2 seconds left on the clock to put the Sparks up one, 77-76. She finished the night with 18 points on 7-of-16 shooting, while dishing out a team-high eight assists and snagging six steals.
• Odyssey Sims led Los Angeles with a game-high 21 points on 6-of-14 points, while recording three rebounds and two assists.
• Nneka Ogwumike tallied 19 points on 8-of-15 shooting and led the Sparks with nine rebounds.

HOME QUOTES

Lynx Head Coach Cheryl Reeve 

On tonight’s game…
“…What I told them was that I appreciated that players came in with the will to win. I thought Tanisha Wright had her stretch where she was just trying to will something to happen. I thought Kizer when she came in, I probably should’ve played her more, you know, she was doing things to will us and she was getting exposed on the defensive end. And then obviously Lindsay, just trying to put us in position, 5.8 with a foul to give, and if we would’ve executed getting a foul on and we didn’t.”

On the Sparks’ defense…
“Well they only have, they have no post players. They had one post player. Nneka Ogwumike so they were, I’ll be damned that they’re going to let the ball go inside and they just kept flooding, flooding and we just botched every opportunity on the inside so we couldn’t hold it. We forced it to her and it was just dumb, it was dumb basketball. How can you have that big of an advantage and you can’t exploit it? So, we had good moments where we did, you know, just give LA credit they had to endure watching the ceremony, whatever they did, didn’t watch it. They obviously had a chip on their shoulder and we just didn’t have an edge.”

Lynx Center Sylvia Fowles 

On tonight’s game…
“That was to be expected though especially after last year when we dominated the paint, we kind of knew what they were going to do. It took a while to get some adjusting to, but I mean I’m not going get down on myself. It’s the first game so you pretty much just adjust from here and watch some film tomorrow and see what you can do better to get ready for the next game.”

On turnovers…
“You know I stopped talking about turnovers but we definitely had too many turnovers, somethings that’s out of characteristic for us, so that’s going to be a focal point for next game as well too.”

Lynx Guard Maya Moore   

On tonight’s game…
“The things that we can control that we didn’t control is the frustrating part. Every team’s going want to come in here and win so a lot to learn from, a lot to be motivated by and we will be better than today.”

On mental switch from ceremony to game…
“You try to enjoy each moment and then you’ve got to flip a switch and be ready to play and sometimes it works out well and sometimes it might not work out well. You don’t know the reason for everything and we wanted to start out the game better than we did. Again, I think the turnovers had a lot to do with the start that we had and we can fix those.”

Lynx Guard Lindsay Whalen

On what sparked her in the fourth quarter…
“To try to win. It was kind of like a now or never thing, so we needed a little momentum, a little more oomph there in the fourth. Unfortunately, the third was pretty bad for us, the starting group didn’t come out playing well at all. So the fourth quarter we tried to win the game at that point.”

VISITOR QUOTES

Sparks Head Coach Brian Agler 

On thoughts on the game…
“Same old game between the Sparks and the Lynx, same thing. You know, very competitive I was really proud of how we battled and competed. Obviously, their team played probably as well as they could have but you know I just liked our energy and making plays defensively.”

On the final play being under review…
“I thought it went in. I didn’t think Nneka’s at the end of the first half, the one they reviewed, was in. I thought it was still in her hand, which was right and then I thought Chelsea got rid of it. It was a heck of a shot, a left-hand shot, at the rim there was a lot of congestion there, they rotated over, and they got there. She just had the ability to get it up and in.”

Sparks Center Nneka Ogwumike  

On tonight’s win…
“I mean it’s 2018 so it feels good to win the first game of the season and to start the tone off the way we wanted to. We just wanted to get better, so we started off great.”

On mindset coming into the game…
“Don’t foul because I’m the only post player. So, I was like, I can not get in foul trouble. That was really my main mindset and I just really wanted to be able to be effective on offense. I think we did a good job of balancing inside and out because, being the only post player, it would have been easy for them to just focus on me. I know I can do more but with what we have right now, I think that it was okay.

Sparks Guard Essence Carson

 On how it feels to win tonight after the finals loss last season…
“I mean it just feels good to win, you know. We put last year behind us, although you know over the past, I don’t know how many months, seven or eight, it has definitely been on our minds, especially since the series went all the way to game five, losing like that. This season is a fresh start. We’re working on things. We have focal points, and today we took care of those areas, and we did good, even though we came out short manned. We put our hearts into it.”

On playing without Candace Parker…
“I mean, as you see we still played together. It doesn’t matter who were missing, we try to pick up the slack as much as we can. Again, she’s not the only person that’s missing, but she is a great player. One of the greatest to ever play the game, but we have a team full of greatness. Our coaching staff has great minds, and we have a bunch of women who have the will to get it done. If we showed up with four, we would figure out a way to be in the game. So we gave our self an opportunity just by staying close in the game, and then Chelsea hit an amazing shot at the end.”