2 games to go and the Minnesota Lynx are alive in the WNBA playoff race
With two games before the WNBA regular season ends on Sunday, the Minnesota Lynx earned a massive victory on Thursday night, beating the Phoenix Mercury 86-77 on the back of a strong fourth quarter where they outscored the Mercury 27-17.
Minnesota was led by 16 points from Sylvia Fowles, while Aerial Powers finished with 14 points, 10 of of them coming in the big fourth quarter.
The win over Phoenix didn't come without some help as the Mercury announced 30 minutes before the start of the game that leading scorer Skylar Diggins-Smith would miss the game for personal reasons.
The victory puts the Lynx (14-20) in a four-way tie for seventh place with Atlanta, New York and Phoenix. Minnesota has a huge game at home against Seattle Friday and then wraps up the regular season Sunday against Connecticut.
Connecticut is third in the WNBA and Seattle is fourth, so neither game will be easy.
The Minnesota #Lynx have gone from a 3-13 start and at the bottom of the #WNBA standings to rattling off 11 wins over their next 18 games to get back into a playoff seed with two games remaining.
— Mitchell Hansen (@M_Hansen13) August 11, 2022
You really can't make this stuff up.
The top eight teams make the playoffs, so the final two spots are all still within reach for Minnesota, Atlanta, New York, Phoenix and Los Angeles (13-21).
Note: Jessica Shepard had 15 points and 12 rebounds for Minnesota, and Moriah Jefferson had a career-best 12 assists.
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.