In a three-way battle for the last first-round bye in next week’s WNBA playoffs, the Atlanta Dream put up no fight early Tuesday night against the worst team in the league, and lost 71-67 to the San Antonio Stars in Philips Arena.
A short-staffed squad exhausted itself digging out of a 17-point first-quarter hole, but couldn’t hang onto four fourth-quarter leads while running out of gas near the end.
Rookie Bria Holmes scored a career-high 20 points to fuel Atlanta’s rally, and Elizabeth Williams pitched in 17 points and 12 rebounds in 40 minutes. It wasn’t enough.
Whatever happened as Atlanta fell behind 22-5 was more than the absence of leading scorer Angel McCoughtry, who served a one game suspension for picking up her seventh technical foul of the season last Tuesday against Phoenix. This wasn’t about starting two rookies, Holmes and first-timer Rachel Hollivay, either.
Head coach Michael Cooper had a solid theory: he said the Dream (16-16) didn’t take the Stars (7-25) seriously enough.
“This was a loss that kind of hurt more than any of the season,” Cooper said. “It was a difficult game to play because the mentality of an athlete, and I’ve been a professional athlete, is that you kind of looking at the team you’re playing and say, ‘OK, they’re not in the playoffs,’ and you come out lax.”
The Dream weren’t sluggish because forward Sancho Lyttle was out. Atlanta is used to that; she missed her eighth game of the past 10 with a sprained right foot.
San Antonio slogged into town with a six-game losing streak, missing leading scorer Dearica Hamby and co-leading rebounder Kayla McBride, and yet boat-raced Atlanta in the first quarter.
After making just 3-of-19 shots in that time, Atlanta cut a 14-point deficit to 31-25 by halftime, and took the lead several times in the third and fourth quarters.
“No clue,” Tiffany Hayes (12 points) said of Atlanta’s slow start. “Once it got to the last quarter, they were still hitting shots and doing the hustle plays. We were trying, but we started in a hole. It was a lot to overcome.”
Atlanta made just 2-of-18 3-pointers while San Antonio’s Astou Ndour scored a career-high 20 points, and rookie Moriah Jefferson added 19.
The Dream shot just 30.7 percent (23-of-75). Ndour and Jefferson made three 3-pointers each, and Atlanta was done in by heavy legs late.
Ndour got free on a back-door cut to give the Stars their final lead at 64-63 with 1:48 left in the game, and somehow found herself wide open for a trey with 35 seconds to go. That made it 67-63. The second-year pro scored 13 points in the final quarter.
In the WNBA’s new playoff format, the top two teams – Minnesota and Los Angeles — will receive first- and second-round byes. The third- and fourth-best records will earn first-round byes.
Indiana, Atlanta and Chicago entered Tuesday’s action tied for the No. 4 spot with identical records, although the Fever hold a tiebreaker over the Dream, who hold a tiebreaker over the Sky. Chicago (17-15) won Tuesday, though, to move into the No. 4 spot as Indiana lost. That leaves the Dream at No. 6.
“It came down to the fourth quarter,” Holmes said. “It came down to the little things.”
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