Phoenix Mercury overcome a huge night from Sophia Young to defeat San Antonio Silver Stars - WNBA
On Saturday night, the US Airways Center was witness to a closely fought game as DeWanna Bonner helped Phoenix Mercury defeat San Antonio Silver Stars 94-90, winning back to back games for the first time in the season.
Bonner put up a splendid performance of 22 points, 9 rebounds to assist the Phoenix cause. Diana Taurasi added 25 points on an 8 off 15 shooting night. Briana Gilbreath came off the bench to chip in with 13 while Samantha Prahalis
and Alexis Hornbuckle contributed 12 and 11 points respectively.
Sophia Young had a monstrous night with 32 points and 8 rebounds for the Silver Stars, who had 21 points and 6 rebounds from Danielle Adams while Becky Hammon added10 points and dished out 5 assists.
Silver Stars shot the ball 45.3% from the field as compared to Mercury’s 43.8% while both teams missed only three free throws each in the game. Phoenix, committed 13 turnovers as compared to San Antonio’s 11 in the game but were
helped out with their three point conversion as they fared slightly better from long range, converting 35.7% of their attempts.
San Antonio got off to a good start and held an 11-5 lead early but a series of three pointers from Prahalis and Hornbuckle allowed Phoenix to grab the lead. The remaining time in the first quarter was closely fought and if it
wasn’t for a three pointer from Jia Perkins, the score would not have been tied at 24 after one.
The start to the second quarter followed the same script, but an 18-0 run after the first three minutes allowed Phoenix to take a 45-33 lead. Mercury maintained their advantage and led by 52-41 heading into the interval. The Silver
Stars has the better of Mercury in the third, but they were unable to pull off that one decisive run which could have slashed the lead. San Antonio outscored Mercury 21-18 in the stanza and cut the lead down to only 8 points.
Phoenix opened up the final quarter with a 7-2 run and looked comfortable at that point. But San Antonio were not willing to go down that easy. They came charging back with a 7-2 run of their own late in the stanza, but dug themselves
into a hole as Hammon turned the ball over with 19.3 seconds remaining.
Mercury went the other and the ball found its way to Taurasi, who made her way to the free throw line to convert both. She did the same five seconds later to effectively close out the contest.
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