Coach Marynell Meadors said earlier this week that she wanted the Dream to play with focus and she wanted her bench to produce.
She got both in an 81-65 demolition of Phoenix on Thursday night at Philips Arena as the Dream continued their up-and-down play this season.
The Dream were powered by their reserves. After scoring two points in the previous game against Indiana, they scored a season-high 37 on Thursday, and all of the players showed an aggressiveness that was lacking in Sunday’s loss to the Fever. The team looked much more like the one that blew out New York in the second game than the one that has lost twice to Indiana.
“The physicality of the Indiana game showed that we weren’t prepared for that,” Meadors said. “We pushed the action [tonight] and did a nice job on the defensive end.”
The Dream’s focus was evident in their defense. They limited the Mercury to 38-percent shooting and harassed them into missing their first 14 3-point attempts. The Mercury, who played without Diana Taurasi (left hip flexor), were the WNBA’s third-best 3-point shooting team (40 percent). They made four Thursday, all in the fourth quarter when the game was out of reach.
Meadors said her defense did a good job keeping the Mercury’s offense from flowing from the left to the middle, which they like to do.
The Dream, who got off to hot starts in their past two games, played well in the first quarter, but had only a three-point lead to show for it. That changed when the reserves were inserted in the second quarter. Led by Ketia Swanier, Cathrine Kraayeveld and Tiffany Hayes, the Dream built an 18-point lead with 3:56 left. Hayes capped the lead with a layup and free throw.
“I think we just turned up the intensity a little bit,” said Hayes, who finished with eight points. “The second team came in and did what they had to do.”
The starters played most of the third quarter, and the Dream increased their lead to 21 on a steal and layup by Angel McCoughtry with 5:27 remaining. She played the second half with her left leg wrapped.
McCoughtry said she felt a tweak in the leg in the first half. It’s the same leg in which she strained a muscle against Indiana. She said after the game that the leg felt fine.
By the end the of the third quarter the lead was large enough that Meadors was able to rest McCoughtry and most of her starters. But the Dream’s reserves didn’t let the lead shrink.
Laurie Koehn made back-to-back 3-pointers to give the Dream a 25-point lead with less than six minutes left.
It was a particularly strong game for Koehn and Kraayeveld, who were acquired in the offseason for their outside shooting but had combined to average 5.3 points per game. Meadors said she spoke with Kraayeveld during the week and stressed that she needed to shoot. Both found their touch Thursday, with Kraayeveld scoring 12 and Koehn six.
“I think Coach showed the confidence in me to come in and knock down a few shots,” Kraayeveld said. “Coach has been really good to me, encouraging me to keep shooting.”
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