You can’t win them all.
That’s kind of how the late stretch of the Las Vegas Aces’ 98-87 road defeat to the WNBA-leading Minnesota Lynx felt Saturday afternoon at Target Center.
The Aces, nearing the end of a grueling five-game road trip — which will be wrapped Sunday morning in New York on the second half of a back-to-back — looked a little leggy in the fourth quarter against Minnesota.
They never waved the white flag; that’s just not in their nature, but once the Lynx smelled blood in the water, the end result was taken out of the visitors’ hands.
Buoyed by a stunning 89-82 loss to the Los Angeles Sparks on Thursday — which snapped their 10-game win streak — the Lynx, most of all, really didn’t want to lose two in a row. Secondly, they already had a loss to the Aces on their record — sans Napheesa Collier — and were desperate to right that wrong.
That showed in their urgency and overall energy from start to finish. Shooting 49 percent from the field and 52 percent from three-point range also helped.
Minnesota’s game plan was simple — stop A’ja Wilson, who was celebrating her 30th birthday, at all costs and live with the consequences defensively. On offense, apparently, it was just not to miss. Both aspects worked exactly how Cheryl Reeve would have wanted them to.
The Lynx had multiple bodies on Wilson as soon as the Aces even thought of passing her the ball. The hosts held the four-time MVP to 16 points on 5-for-17 from the field, forcing Wilson into committing five of the Aces’ 16 costly turnovers. Despite having to play through a ton of contact, Wilson only mustered six free-throw attempts. She added eight rebounds.
“It was like swarm ball,” Aces’ head coach Becky Hammon said afterward. “I thought our spacing didn’t help us at times. And then also just a sense of urgency to get the ball out. They will make you pass; I thought they dared us to pass today and we just didn’t pass the ball well enough to beat a good defensive team.
“Their crowds, the amount of bodies that they put around the ball, became a real positive factor for them because we were just not able to get the ball back out and swing to people that were wide open.”
Initially, the Aces coped with Minnesota’s defensive pressure quite well. They trailed by just three after the first quarter, despite the Lynx having hit six triples — including four from Kayla McBride and a halfcourt buzzer beater from Olivia Miles.
McBride would not hit another the rest of the way, but her tone-setting opening frame was enough to get the rest of the Lynx — who hit a season-high 15 three-pointers — going. All of Minnesota’s starters had scored in double figures before the fourth quarter began.
Miles ended up leading the hosts with 26 points, four rebounds, and seven assists. Collier added 22 points (5-7 3PT) and six boards. Natasha Howard (17-8-6 on 7-11 FG) and Courtney Williams (13-7-7) were extremely productive for a Minnesota offense that fired on all cylinders.
In what was a very tightly contested game in which neither team led by more than double digits until late in the third quarter, the Lynx finally found some separation when back-to-back triples from Williams and Dorka Juhasz gave them a 66-55 advantage with 3:49 remaining in the period.
The Aces, however, promptly responded with a 7-0 run, and a corner three from Dana Evans saw them behind by eight going into the fourth.
But the Aces had to keep battling not only Minnesota, but also themselves in the fourth. The untimely turnovers persisted. Out of the 16 that the Aces committed, 10 were stolen by the Lynx, leading to 22 points. In contrast, the Aces had just three steals on 14 Minnesota giveaways.
Vegas starting to run out of gas was emphasized by its late inefficiency. The Aces ended the game shooting 43 percent from the field and 37 percent from deep. Even a rare double-digit offering from the bench (23 points) didn’t help, though the 10 from Jewell Loyd and 11 from Evans were a welcome sight.
Jackie Young paced the Aces with 23 points (6-13 FG) and five rebounds, but also turned the ball over five times. Fellow Vegas birthday girl NaLyssa Smith posted an impressive double-double (14 points, 11 rebounds, 5-8 FG) in just 24 minutes (foul trouble).
“I had too many [turnovers], obviously,” Young said. “Just have to get rid of [the ball] a little bit earlier.” Young added that she knows what kind of defense Minnesota is going to run, so she felt a lot of her mistakes were on her, and she just has to do a better job of reading those schemes.
The Lynx put the finishing touches on their win with 1:12 remaining in the fourth quarter. The sequence was all about Collier — one of the three Lynx guarding Wilson in the paint — who stuffed A’ja’s shot attempt, which would’ve sliced the Aces’ deficit to five, before getting a crafty righty layup to fall at the other end, extending Minnesota’s lead to a cozier 94-85.
The greatest implication of the loss for the Aces (22-10) is that they dropped to third place in the league standings, 3.5 games back of the Lynx (26-7). Golden State Valkyries (22-9) are now second.
However, all is still to play for in the playoff seeding battle, and the Aces will get a chance to exact their revenge on the Lynx next Saturday in Las Vegas.
Tomorrow in New York, as the Aces try to finish the road trip with a winning record (currently 2-2), Hammon said that different rotations can be expected due to the amount of big minutes piling up in the legs of her starters.
Concluding with a positive statistical nugget — Wilson's 16 points saw her surpass the 6,500 mark on her career, becoming just the second player in league history with at least 6,500 points, 2,500 rebounds, and 500 blocked shots. She accomplished the feat in 106 fewer games than Candace Parker (403 games), per Aces PR.