"They were ready to play," Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said after her team beat Los Angeles 94-77 on Thursday in the first game of the Western Conference Finals.

"[The] first five or six minutes we played with some fatigue," Reeve said, "but they played through it. Our second unit was really good at jump starting us and playing more aggressively. I was really impressed with our team today."

So was L.A. coach Carol Ross.

"We could not match their physicality and we paid for it," Ross said. "[The Lynx] just have players making plays and we could not score. Our defense was going to have to get a stop every trip because we were completely anemic on the offensive end.

"They are what they are. They are extremely good and they played like champions today."

Actually, the Sparks shot almost the same percentage from the field as the Lynx, 48.3 percent to 48.8. The difference was L.A. took only 58 shots, the Lynx 82 or 24 more.

How did that happen. L.A. had 14 turnovers to the Lynx's 12 and the Lynx had a 13-4 dominance in offensive rebounds.