Liston will start for Lynx today, with Montgomery coming off the bench

Not only does newly-acquired Lynx guard Renee Montgomery have to deal with a new team and trying to master a few plays that will allow her to help the team in today's game with Connecticut. She also came here from Seattle battling a virus that prompted the team's doctors to give her a couple bags of IV fluid at her physical this morning.

Coach Cheryl Reeve said Montgomery is battling a food-borne virus that affected a couple players on the Seattle roster.

"We found that out a little later than we would have liked," Reeve said.

That is one reason Reeve will start Tricia Liston at the shooting guard spot, and Reeve hopes that Montgomery – who barely got to Target Center in time for warmups because of her post-trade physical – can play 15 quality minutes.

Upon arrival Tuesday night, Montgomery and Lynx assistant Shelley Patterson met to go over a truncated version of the team's playbook. "It's just a get-through-today kind of thing," Reeve said.

The bottom line is Reeve wants Montgomery to play hard and not worry about doing things wrong.

"I don't want her to be afraid that she's going to screw up," Reeve said. "She'll screw up when she does that. I just want her to play. I care very much about how hard she plays. If she plays really hard, and is connected with her teammates, good things will happen for her.''

Reeve said that she remains cautiously optimistic about Whalen returning next week. She said Whalen was diagnosed with a Hyphema, which means there is blood in the front of the injured eye. Whalen will have a couple more appointments with doctors in the coming days to see how she's progressing.

"I talked to her late last night," Reeve said. "She wished us well. I expressed concern that we might be going into a pistol fight with a knife and she said, 'Well, I think we have a pretty big pistol named Maya (Moore).' She thought we'd be OK.''