actual live women's basketball today

[seacatfan]

Yeah Sami will be missed. She hasn't been scoring all that much since around the midpoint of the season, but her energy off the bench still brings a spark.

On the other hand the Aces are missing Dearica Hamby due to injury. They also moved Danielle Robinson into the starting lineup. And Jackie Young was a no show in their last series. They went from having the most productive bench in the league to getting almost nothing from the reserves. Wilson and McCoughtry were good most of the series, but it's gonna take more than 2 players showing up or the Storm should win in a cake walk.

[seacatfan]

Storm blew a 19 point lead in Q3, but then ran away in Q4 to take a 1-0 series lead. Bird set a Finals and playoff record w/ 16 assists. Stewie went off w/ 37 points and 15 rebounds. Loyd had 28. Wilson scored 19 but was only 6-20 from the floor. Seattle's high scoring duo were 26-41.

Las Vegas was last in the league by a mile this season in attempted and made 3's, only averaged about 4 made per game. They were 10-21 tonight and still lost by 13.

[seacatfan]

I don't think the Aces have enough answers. They played about as well as they could on offense, shot 53% from the floor, 8-19 behind the arc (twice as many as they make on average), scored 91 points...and still lost by 13. The Storm are just a machine. Stewie, Clark and Howard all over 20 points, Bird w/ 16 points and 10 assists. Storm 12-26 3's, 33 assists. Aces got what has to be a career performance 17 points on 8-10 shooting from Emma Cannon (who?!), and still not nearly enough.

[seacatfan]

Storm annihilated Aces in Game 3 for the sweep. Looked to me like the Aces quit in the 3rd quarter. Stewie was pretty much unstoppable throughout the series, Loyd was pretty darn good, and various other players stepped up at various times.

[ZagDad84]

The Storm certainly showed Las Vegas who was the better team this year. The 92-59 victory was the largest margin of victory in WNBA Finals history.

With the victory, the Seattle Storm join the Houston Comets (defunct franchise) and the Minnesota Lynx as the only 4-time WNBA Champions.

Breanna Stewart was the unanimous choice for MVP. Only four other players have won two Finals MVP awards: the Houston Comets' Cynthia Cooper, the Los Angeles Sparks' Lisa Leslie, the Phoenix Mercury's Diana Taurasi and the Minnesota Lynx's Sylvia Fowles. Stewart, who shot 10-of-14 from the floor in Game 3, had her sixth consecutive WNBA Finals game with at least 20 points. That is the longest such streak in history, passing Cooper, who had five in a row for Houston from 1997 to 1999, and Angel McCoughtry, who had five straight for the Atlanta Dream from 2010 to 2011. The star forward was the No. 1 draft pick out of UConn in 2016 after winning four consecutive NCAA titles with the Huskies. She was named rookie of the year for her first WNBA season, and she was a league champion in 2018, her third year.

Should have been no doubt that Stewart would be a dominate force in the WNBA. In college, She was the first-ever unanimous pick for AP Player of the Year and the first-ever three-time AP Player of the Year. In leading UConn to another national championship, she was part of the first four-time national championship class in NCAA history and also became the first player to be named the Final Four Most Outstanding Player four times. In her college career Stewart won 151 games and lost 5, which included four straight national championships. She is the first NCAA basketball player ever to tally 300 assists and block 300 shots. Stewart finished her career second on UConn's all-time scoring list at 2,676 career points, fourth with 1,179 career rebounds, and first in blocks (414).

Sue Bird has been a member of the Seattle Storm for each of their 4 WNBA championships. Despite tearing her ACL in her freshman year and only playing in 8 games, Bird won two NCAA championships at UConn (plus losing in the final 4 in her junior year) with an overall collegiate record of 114-4. In addition Bird has won 5 Euroleague championships. Bird also has won 4 Olympic Gold medals in 2004, 2008, 2012 & 2016.

Sue Bird is less than 2 weeks away from her 40th birthday and while her time with the Storm is likely to be limited to another year or two, with Stewart and fellow all-WNBA players Jewell Loyd, Natasha Howard Clark and Alysha Clark the Storm look to be stacked for years to come.

ZagDad

[ZagDad84]

From today's Spokesman-Review:

Good, bad of the bubble: Courtney Vandersloot, Briann January look back at ‘unique’ WNBA season
UPDATED: Thu., Oct. 8, 2020
By Dave Trimmer For The Spokesman-Review

The Bubble.

Sounds comfortable and cozy – relaxing, even – during these difficult times.

Courtney Vandersloot and Briann January definitely felt safe and secure in the WNBA bubble. But comfortable and cozy? Not so much.

And it definitely was not relaxing.

“It had its good days and bad days,” Vandersloot said of her stay in Bradenton, Florida, where the WNBA played an abbreviated 22-game regular season, and later playoffs, during the coronavirus pandemic. “(They) did a good job. I felt safe, taken care of.”

But the compressed schedule didn’t leave much time to escape the grind of basketball. The regular season began July 25 and ended six weeks later.

“Being there, playing every other day, takes toil on you physically, mentally, emotionally,” the former Gonzaga star said. “I was grateful to be playing, having a season. Not having to travel was a nice little perk. It was a unique experience I hope never to have to experience again.”

The season ended Tuesday night with the Seattle Storm sweeping the Las Vegas Aces in the best-of-five finals. Those teams tied for the regular-season title with 18-4 records.

Vandersloot’s Chicago Sky went 12-10 and January’s Connecticut Sun 10-12 before the seventh-seeded Sun eliminated the sixth-seeded Sky in a one-game opening round playoff game.

Vandersloot and Quigley left Friday to play the winter in Russia.

January returned to Hungary for a second season on Wednesday.

You can read the entire article here: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/20...rsloot-briann/

ZagDad