Cruising early, Lynx fall flat in second half in blowout loss to Storm

Kayla McBride fired in a three-pointer seconds after the opening tip Thursday. Courtney Williams couldn’t miss early. And the Lynx defense was on point in the first quarter as much as Seattle couldn’t make a bucket. The Storm missed 10 of their first 11 shots.

The announced crowd of 9,810 — not too shabby on a night that included Daryl Hall performing at the State Fair and the season opener for Gophers football — watched the Lynx lead by 13 points after the first quarter then extend that lead to as many as 21 in the second. It looked like a sure victory that would have been a franchise-record 31st of the season as well as clinching the No. 1 seed in the WNBA playoffs.

The Lynx certainly will clinch that seed sometime in the coming games, so the drive for another title will be with homecourt advantage. But instead of watching the Lynx earn a milestone victory, fans at Target Center watched the Lynx receive a wakeup call. They lost 93-79 while blowing their largest lead of the season, outscored 60-33 in the second half.

The Lynx only won one of the four quarters, the first. The game began to shift late in the second quarter as Seattle pulled to within 46-33 at halftime before outscoring the Lynx 34-17 in the third.

Brittney Sykes made one of two free throws following a phantom foul call on McBride to give Seattle a 64-63 lead late in the third. And the Skylar Diggins followed with one of her rainbow threes and the Storm never looked back.

Dominique Malonga and Erica Wheeler came off the Seattle bench to score 13 points apiece. And Malonga, Nneka Ogwumike and Ezi Magbegor are bigs who can shoot from the perimeter as well as work down low. That troubled the Lynx, who got away from their defensive principles.

“It was a culmination of things. We got pretty undisciplined in the things we wanted to get done,” star forward Napheesa Collier said. “And I thought we did it pretty good in, like, defending the paint. But then, you know, they started hitting threes, and we weren’t getting out the way that we needed to.”

And they couldn’t match Seattle’s intensity. Seattle, trying to clinch a postseason berth, was throttled 95-75 by Indiana on Tuesday before coming to town.

Diggins raised her intensity level in the second half, during which she scored 19 of her game-high 23 points. That seemed to rub off on her teammates, and the Lynx also never had an answer.

At the end of the third, Diggins began jawing with Lynx players as teams went to the bench. McBride clapped back at her. And Cheryl Reeve, who was at the scorer’s table, exchanged words with Diggins before the Lynx coach received a technical.

“I told her I appreciated her level of compete,” Reeve said.

Magbegor led the Storm with five blocked shots, and Seattle had 10 as a team. Reeve already was flustered over their defensive shortcomings after warning her players about how Seattle would make adjustments in the second half.

Williams scored 18 points while adding 10 assists and five rebounds. She got on a heater in the second quarter, influencing the Lynx’s first five baskets. She assisted on Jessica Shepard’s layup, sank two free throws, grabbed a rebound for a layup, sank a three-pointer then fed Collier for a layup. Target Center was rocking. But when it was time to put Seattle away, the Lynx resisted. And Seattle gained momentum the Lynx could not stop.

McBride led the Lynx with 20 points. Collier scored 18 points but shot 7-for-23 from the field, missing all five three-point attempts.

But as Reeve pointed out, Seattle ended up celebrating a big victory on the Lynx home floor.

And she pretty much demanded that the loss should be taken as a wakeup call, because she hasn’t been pleased with their defense in some of their recent victory.