Lynx 102, Sun 63: A Complete and Utter Blowout

Napheesa Collier continued her outstanding season with 23 points and nine rebounds in a blowout win.

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in downtown Minneapolis, the Minnesota Lynx, coming off a thrilling 96-92 overtime victory over the Atlanta Dream, looked to extend their lead atop the WNBA standings against the Connecticut Sun.

While the Lynx have had an outstanding season, winning 13 of their first 15 games, the Sun have had the opposite experience, winning just two of their 16 games this season. Adding insult to injury, the Sun were without their leading scorer, Marina Mabry, who will miss the next couple of weeks with a knee injury.

The Lynx exerted their dominance early, immediately going up by ten points with MVP frontrunner Napheesa Collier scoring four points, including a fall-away jump shot.

The Sun would hold their own for the next few minutes before the Lynx took control of the game for good. The Minnesota defense held Connecticut for the first seven minutes

The stretch was capped off by an incredible play where, following an errant pass, almost every player on the court waited for the ball to go out of bounds, only for Kayla McBridge to run the ball down and hit a wide 3-pointer.

After it was all said and done, the Lynx run ended up being 29-2, stretching from 2:02 in the first quarter to the 2:57 mark of the second quarter. All five of the Lynx starters scored seven or more points, with the team assisting on 14 of their 19 field goals.

The only downside of the first half was that Karlie Samuelson exited the game in the second quarter for the Lynx and did not return to the game.

Minnesota went into the halftime locker room with a 50-26 advantage and didn’t look back from there. The Lynx outscored the Sun 27-15 in the third quarter, including 15 points from Collier and nine points from McBride. Minnesota carried a 36-point lead into the fourth quarter. That was more than enough to carry them to a 102-63 win, bringing their record to 14-2.

It has become a broken record at this point, but Phee was outstanding in this one again, putting up 23 points and nine rebounds along with two steals and one block. McBride shot the lights out, scoring 20 points, including three 3-pointers and five assists. Aneesah Morrow was the Sun’s leading scorer with 16 points.

With losses from the New York Liberty and Phoenix Mercury earlier in the day, the Lynx now hold the best record in the WNBA by three games in the loss column. Collier, the leading candidate for the MVP award, was named one of two WNBA All-Star Game captains along with Caitlin Clark.

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Up Next

The Lynx remain at home as the calendar flips from June to July, returning to the court on July 1 in the Commissioner’s Cup Championship against Clark and the Indiana Fever.

The game, where both teams will have a chance to take home a $500,000 prize pool, will tip off at 7 PM CT at Target Center and can be seen on Amazon Prime Video.