After her team had held on to beat Chicago 86-83 Wednesday night at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., in a game that probably shouldn't have been as tight as it was, Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve went all the way back to the earliest days of training camp to explain her team's latest big win.
She saw it then, she said. A team that, while young, had some toughness. A team that didn't wilt during difficult times in scrimmages, didn't hide when coaches called players out. A team that stuck together.
"I told this team we had that,'' Reeve said. "This team really has a sense of, 'OK, this hasn't gone like we wanted to, but we're going to focus on this.' "
Early in the third period the Lynx were up by 18 points.
But then Chicago charged. The highest-scoring team in the league proceeded to go on a 33-13 run over the next 13 minutes and 4 seconds, to take a 77-75 lead on Allie Quigley's three-pointer with 5:48 left in the game.
Time out.
No panic. Out of a timeout Napheesa Collier passed to Damiris Dantas, who hit her fifth three-pointer of the game (on five tries). After Stephanie Dolson scored for Chicago, the Lynx ran a beautiful pick-and-roll, with Shenise feeding Dantas for the score. Those were the 27th and 28th points of the night for Dantas who, on a night when Collier was a bit off her game, scored a career-high 28 points on 10-for-13 shooting with seven rebounds and three steals as the Lynx improved to 12-5, stayed in fourth place in the WNBA while putting some distance between them and the fifth-place Sky (11-7).
