Game 4 preview: Without their coach and star player, Lynx need a victory Sunday

PHOENIX — Moving on from how the end of Game 3 of the WNBA semifinals played out — compartmentalizing it, pushing past — poses a tall task when that sequence of events now means the Lynx are without their head coach and star player for a win-or-go-home Game 4.

In the final minute of an 84-76 loss to Phoenix, forward Napheesa Collier suffered a left ankle injury that ruled her out of Sunday night’s game. Then coach Cheryl Reeve picked up a one-game suspension after confronting officials and lambasting the league’s officiating postgame.

Minnesota, which entered the playoffs as the top seed and was the only team to sweep its first-round matchup, is now the unlikely team on the ropes and has to win Sunday to force a decisive Game 5 back in Minneapolis on Tuesday.

Associate head coach Eric Thibault will take over head coaching duties in Reeve’s place.

“We’re still here. We’re still a great team,” guard Courtney Williams said after Friday night’s game. “We still [have] a game we’ve got to win, so we can’t dwell on this one. You’ve got to feel it, ’cause you don’t want to feel that feeling again.”

The truth of the matter: Minnesota was trailing 80-76 before Collier and Reeve exited the PHX Arena floor. And the Mercury’s 20-point second-half comeback to steal Game 2 in overtime at Target Center had already tipped home-court advantage back in Phoenix’s favor.

Now the Lynx have to try to address the issues that have tripped them up lately, without their MVP award runner-up on the court and their head coach on the bench, if they want to keep their shot at a WNBA title alive.

The Mercury, exploiting size mismatches and some of the physicality that Reeve criticized, have outscored Minnesota 132-106 in the paint and outrebounded the Lynx down the stretch in Games 2 and 3.

Between the 11 games that Collier missed in the regular season, plus a pair that Alanna Smith didn’t appear in, forward Jessica Shepard picked up 12 starts and center Masha Kliundikova started once.

But Shepard’s minutes have come relatively quietly in this Phoenix series, as she has put up just five points and nine rebounds across the three games. She played eight minutes Friday.

Kliundikova’s minutes off the bench have been impactful. She had eight points, grabbed six rebounds and blocked three shots in 18 minutes in Game 3 — especially key once Smith, the WNBA Co-Defensive Player of the Year, was limited to 12 minutes. In those dozen minutes, Smith was 0-for-4 from the field with one rebound.

Minnesota will need solid performances from all three bigs to shore up the interior defense and make up for the post portion of Collier’s three-level scoring.

Minnesota did beat the Mercury once without Collier, in May, but that was with Thomas and Copper both out injured as well. This specific matchup — no Collier and Phoenix at full strength — is a new one.

The Lynx are 7-4 without Collier this season, with seven of those games missed in August because of a right ankle injury. During that 5-2 stretch, Williams was the Lynx’s leading scorer three times, Kayla McBride twice, and Bridget Carleton and Smith each once. Minnesota also benefited from the presence of guard DiJonai Carrington off the bench; she’s now out with a season-ending foot injury.

In the Game 2 loss, the Lynx starters led the way in scoring, with all but Carleton in double digits, while the second unit netted just three points. Then, in Game 3, it was reserve guard Natisha Hiedeman bursting off the bench for a team-high 19 points in just under 23 minutes.

“Not getting production from them [is] something that’s on our minds,” Reeve said of the bench players before Game 3. “We’ve sort of talked about collectively how we can help them and make sure our play calling represents the ability to give them some opportunities.”

Leading nights from players in both units is a key to helping Minnesota keep up with the Mercury’s big three and leave Phoenix with the series still alive.

The Lynx’s league-best defensive rating from the regular season has slipped to fourth-best in the postseason, while the Mercury’s defensive rating has been the highest among the playoff field and posed challenges for Minnesota, forcing turnovers and cold shooting from deep.

After staging its own second-half surge in Game 1 of the series, Minnesota has been outscored 44-19 in the fourth quarters of the next two games, despite holding leads late in both. Collier had been held to four points in the fourth across the series thus far.

“They only scored nine points [in the fourth], and that’s due to our good defense,” Sabally said after Game 3. “We closed them out. We knew what they were running, so we’re really well prepared.”

Should Game 4 play as closely as Games 2 and 3 did down the stretch, Minnesota will need to hope that its fourth quarter looks more like Game 1’s — or how the Lynx performed late against Golden State in the first round of the playoffs. If not, it could be the last 10 minutes of basketball the Lynx play this year, after having clinched the No. 1 seed with 12 games left to play in the regular season.