Connecticut ends Minnesota's season in WNBA playoffs
Minnesota was the only underdog to force a decisive Game 3 in the opening round of the WNBA playoffs, but they were stopped short of reaching the semifinals with a 90-75 season-ending loss to the Connecticut Sun Wednesday night.
The Lynx fell into a 15-hole at the half and failed to claw back much closer, trailing by double-digits for the majority of the night inside Target Center in Minneapolis.
DeWanna Bonner scored 25 points to go along with 10 rebounds and six assists and Alyssa Thomas filled the box score with 28 points, 12 assists and six rebounds.
While the Sun had a balanced scoring attack with three players scoring at least 18 points, the Lynx relied solely on Napheesa Collier, who had a game-high 31 points. Minnesota's next leading scorers were Bridget Carleton with 13 points off the bench and Kayla McBride with 10 points.
Connecticut will now face the No. 2 New York Liberty in one semifinal while the No. 4 Dallas Wings face the No. 1 Las Vegas Aces in the other semifinal.
Minnesota reached the postseason for the 12th time in the last 13 seasons. They'll now look ahead to the 2024 season, which could be big with offseason additions and a strong rookie class featuring Diamond Miller and Dorka Juhasz entering their second year in the WNBA.
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.