Lynx coach says San Antonio put on clinic, her players blame defense

Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve gave credit to San Antonio after her team's 93-84 loss Sunday on the road.

"It was everything we expected," she said, according to a Silver Stars news release. "We think San Antonio is just playing great right now. We knew we would come down here and it would be really hard. They made shots. They have so much confidence right now on offensive.

"They are moving it and sharing it. They put on a clinic. They turned the tables on us and I thought they played great. When the ball goes into the hole it is a lot of fun."

San Antonio (7-5) is 5-1 in its last six games and has won five in a row at home.

The Silver Stars led 35-21 after the first quarter.

"We cut it to four by halftime," Reeve said. "We come out of that one timeout in the fourth quarter [and] we were down four and we did not score for however long. San Antonio executed their stuff. We don't get stops and we don't score, the next thing you know it is back to double figures. We just could not get over the hump and they played great."

With the scored 80-74, the Lynx ad a chance to pull within three when Seimone Augustus drove down the lane and scored but was called for a charge instead of getting a free throw. The Silver Stars went on a 11-2 run. Game over.

"[It was] the pace that they played at," Reeve said. "Offensively they are playing very confidently. We think the two teams, Minnesota and San Antonio, are very similar. That is what we told our team. This is a team that is unselfish. They share the ball. They don't care who gets the credit. They just want to get the win. They are deep. They have a great bench and they have a great coach."

Dan Hughes is San Antonio's coach. He is a friend of Reeve's. She was on his staff at Cleveland once.

The Lynx had 16 assists after getting 27 the previous game.

BAD DEFENSE

"We let them get a lot of open shots," said Rebekkah Brunson, who had 12 points and 10 rebounds. "They came out shooting 100% for a while. They were on fire. We didn't necessarily do what we needed to do defensively."

Except perhaps in the second quarter when the Lynx outscored San Antonio 21-12 and closed with four points at the half.

"We played catch-up the whole game," Brunson said. "[We] never really quite caught up but we tried. Our hat goes off to them. They played a great game. We tried to lower their shooting percentage a little bit since they were shooting such a high percentage, but they continued to shoot almost 50% from the field. A lot of that was from three. They hit a lot of threes."

The Silver Stars had 39 points on threes, making 12 of 25.

"We tried to do little bit of everything," Brunson said. "But we couldn't do anything that efficient because they were hitting a lot of shots. It is hard to defend when you have a team shooting like that."

Said Lynx guard Monica Wright, who scored a team-high 18 points off the bench, "We are definitely not happy with the way we played, at all. We could have done so much more things defensively and offensively. It just seemed like one of those nights for us.

"Our defense is just not what is has been. I don't know what it is going to take. We are not going to get down. We are going to get back in the gym when we get back to Minnesota."