Lynx don't have finishing touch

With crowd noise making things difficult, Minnesota didn't get a good play set up for a final shot and lost to Phoenix.

By Jim Gintonio, Special To The Star Tribune

Last update: June 29, 2006 - 1:34 AM

PHOENIX - A 20-second timeout with hostile fans screaming and jeering only a few feet away isn't the ideal situation to set up a play late in a game.

And try as she might, Lynx coach Suzie McConnell Serio wasn't able to outscream the Mercury fans. She failed to get her point across in the final 5.8 seconds, and Minnesota fell 81-78 to Phoenix on Wednesday before 11,661 fans, the largest crowd of the season for a Mercury home game.

McConnell Serio, whose team dropped to 5-9, said not having a full timeout amid the bedlam severely compromised her team's chances after the Mercury's Cappie Pondexter made a three-pointer to break a 78-78 tie. Her hope was to get the ball into Seimone Augustus' hands as soon as possible.

"But she ended up taking the ball out of bounds," she said. "This place was so loud they couldn't hear me yelling from the sidelines. The communication from the sideline just didn't happen in time."

Pondexter was the culprit again on the defensive end. A wayward pass by Augustus went off Pondexter's back, and the Phoenix rookie was able to collar the ball as time ran out.

"We were just trying to get a shooter open any way possible, but it didn't happen," said Augustus. "We had two other shooters in the game capable of knocking down three-point shots. It was just a matter of getting the shooters open to take the shot."

Phoenix (6-7) had an eight-point lead with 3:24 remaining, but the Lynx, behind Augustus and Vanessa Hayden, battled back to tie the score 78-78 with 9.2 seconds left on a layup by Nicole Ohlde.

Augustus led all scorers with 24 points, and Hayden had 18. Both grabbed eight rebounds. The Mercury was led by Pondexter with 19 and Kelly Miller with 17.

Either Pondexter or Diana Taurasi was likely to take the last shot for Phoenix, and the Lynx were caught in a trap as the rookie made her biggest shot of the season.

"Phoenix has great guards, and it came down to that," Hayden said. "They outsmarted us at the end by running that play. We got picked. They made some tough shots, but you can't take it away from those two [Pondexter and Taurasi].

"We fought hard, but they hit the boards like crazy."

McConnell Serio said the game came down to a couple of crucial factors.

"When we did get stopped, or when we missed shots, we gave up offensive rebounds [15]," she said. "Offensively, we were just too stagnant. We addressed it every timeout, but we just didn't have enough movement."