Sammy Prahalis owns the clutch as Phoenix Mercury edge out Washington Mystics – WNBA Recap
Phoenix Mercury dumped Washington Mystics 80-77 on Wednesday night at the US Airways Center in a game that went right down to the wire.
Sammy Prahalis scored the tie breaking lay up 23.2 seconds on the clock before Krystal Thomas knocked down a free throw for the final point.
Prahalis finished the game with 15 points with 7 of them coming in the final 2 minutes of the game. DeWanna Bonner played 40 minutes on the night to finish with a team high 19 points and 7 rebounds but her biggest contribution
came when she knocked down the second of the back to back three pointers for Phoenix to set the game up.
Thomas signed off on the night on a 7 of 8 shooting performance from the field to muster up 15 points while Alexis Hornbuckle ended the game with 11 points.
Michelle Snow managed to get a game high of 21 points and 9 rebounds for the Mystics but her efforts were overshadowed by the exploits of Prahalis and Bonner in the closing stages.
Monique Currie came off the bench to lend a helping hand in the game with 20 points. Only one other player for Washington was able to cross the double digit mark with 13 points coming from Crystal Langhorne.
Both teams were pretty evenly matched up throughout the night and the only significant difference turned out to be the free throw shooting. Phoenix converted 15 of their 20 attempts from the stripe whereas Mystics shot 7 of 15
from the line.
Mercury got off to a good start in the game as they held an 8-2 lead early but a 14-4 response from Washington saw the game get back to level pegging. Both teams finished the quarter the same way they started the game - level on
the score board at 26 each.
An 8-2 run from Mercury to start the second quarter saw them put some kind of day light between them and the visitors. But the Mystics responded with a 8-0 run of their own to snatch back the lead. There was not much to separate
the two teams at the interval with Washington holding a 41-40 advantage.
A similar kind of script was played out in the third quarter which saw both teams going head to head. The only significant distance achieved by any team came at the close of the quarter when Mystics ended the period on a 4-0 run.
In the fourth quarter, Washington were able to slightly get the better of Phoenix by knocking down to back to back treys and a couple of deuces from Snow opened a 5 point lead.
But Phoenix were not going away that easy and responded with back to back treys of their own to snatch the lead right back and with 57 seconds remaining, the scores were level at 77. Prahalis then made a running jump shot to give
Mercury the lead.
On the following possession Currie was blocked by Bonner but the ball went back to Washington. Currie again had the ball in her hands to win the game but was unsuccessful.
On the last possession following a jump back, Langhorne fouled Thomas who made 1 out 2 free throws to help Mercury win this game by 3 points.
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