Seimone Augustus leads as Minnesota Lynx beat Los Angeles Sparks 92-84 – WNBA Recap
On Thursday night at the Target Center in Minneapolis, the reigning WNBA Champions, Minnesota Lynx carried by a late charge, dispatched away the Los Angeles Sparks 92-84. They were led by Seimone Augusts who put 25 points on an
11 of 17 shooting night.
Rebekkah Brunson lent her a helping hand by chipping in 17 points in the game whereas Lindsay Whalen had 14 points as well. Maya Moore shot the ball 4 of 7 from the field to finish with 11 points in the game.
For the visiting Sparks, Candace Parker tied for a team best of 23 points on a 10 of 18 shooting night. Kristi Toliver also put up 23 points whereas Nneka Ogwumike managed 20 points on the night.
Both teams shot the ball pretty well from the field. Minnesota team shot the ball 53.1% from the field whereas the LA managed 49.2%. The Lynx held a slight advantage in the rebounding department by managing 30 rebounds on the night
with 13 of them coming on the offensive glass.
However the game was kept close due to both teams committing a high number of turnovers. The home side turned the ball over on 18 occasions with 13 of them coming in the first half whereas the Sparks finished the night with 19
turnovers in the game.
Augustus deemed it to be very unlike her team to commit such a high number of turnovers and especially in the first half of the game. She contemplated on the matter after the game.
“It's uncharacteristic of us to have that many turnovers in the first half of a game,'' Augustus said. ``I think we were just trying to make the home run play. We had a lot of players running and we wanted to get it there. It wasn't
necessarily panning out for us.''
Minnesota started the game pretty well as they held a 9-2 lead early in the matchup. However by the 4:17 mark of the first, things were evened by the Sparks at 15 each.
The Minnesota team looked to run away with the game and closed out the remaining time of the first quarter with a 15-4 run to take a 30-19 lead.
It took the Sparks almost 8 and half minutes of the second quarter to again even up the proceedings at 40-each. They outscored the Lynx 21-10 in that span and were able to shift the tide in their favour.
LA closed out the first half while holding a 47-44 lead but their work was made much easier by the Lynx who committed 8 turnovers in the second quarter alone.
With just about 3 and half minutes gone in the third quarter, the scores remained pretty close with LA holding a 1 point lead at the 6:34 mark. In the time span of the next two minutes, Sparks put together a 10-2 run to take a
definitive 7 point lead in the ball game.
Minnesota got a hold of themselves after that and responded with an 8-2 run of their own to rally their way back in the game. However after three quarters of game time had been played they still trailed by 4 points.
Within a minute of the fourth quarter being started, Minnesota levelled the score at 70. For the next several minutes of the contest the action remained close with both sides taking turns to snatch away the lead from each other.
From the 4:17 mark in the fourth quarter till the end of the game, this time frame saw the Lynx team close out the proceedings with a 14-5 run. Augustus led the Minnesota charge in that span by putting up 6 points to help her team
hold on in this one by 6 points.
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