The Minnesota Lynx and Indiana Fever met on Friday night in Game 3 of the WNBA Finals, and this one was not void of the dramatics at all.
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“I knew when she caught it, I had a feeling she’d put the ball in”, said Lynx guard Lindsay Whalen, who threw the inbounds pass to Moore with 1.7 seconds left from in front of the Fever bench.
Minnesota also got 13 points from Seimone Augustus and 12 from Renee Montgomery, who hit a three-pointer with just over a minute left to tie the game at 77-77. The Lynx won 80-77 to take a 2-games-to-one lead in the best-of-five series.
The Fever have won eight of their last 10 playoff elimination games dating back their run to the WNBA title in 2012.
Her Lynx teammates laughed and re-enacted the play.
“In college, no matter what we were doing”, Montgomery added, “whether it was preseason workouts, weightlifting teams, pick-ups, we were never allowed on the same team, it just actually wouldn’t be fair”. This time around, it was the Lynx to break the series tie in the first game at Indiana, putting the Eastern Conference champions on the ropes in a win-or-go-home scenario. Moore caught the ball with 1.7 seconds to go, took one dribble to create space, squared up and delivered a dagger from the top of the key.
Now, the Fever and their star forward find themselves in that exact situation: another must-win game.
As had been the case in the first two of the games in the series where each team won by six points, this one came down to the end. We come together at the times we’ve needed to the most. Johnson had nine points during that spurt, including a 3-pointer which made it 37-34 and gave the Fever their first lead since early in the first quarter.
“She’s a great player”, said Coleman. She had to go back to her AAU days when she hit a victor for her Georgia team to win a championship.
“Looking forward to Sunday, but glad we were able to do it with this game being ours”, she added.
They are there, among the highest in league attendance, with corporate partnership sales that have more than doubled in four years, and enjoying a relationship with the Indianapolis sports community Krauskopf describes as “one big family”. “We’ve got to focus on what we need to do to get better”, she said.
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A Fever victory would force a decisive Game 5 Wednesday at Minneapolis (8 p.m., ESPN2).
