Lynx dig too deep of hole to climb out of against Dream

As aggressive and triumphant as Minnesota s defense was in the third quarter to get the Lynx back in Sunday night s championship the lack thereof before and again early in the fourth quarter proved costly Atlanta ultimately held off a late Lynx charge and handed Minnesota its first regular-season home loss in outings with a - win at Target Center We didn t feel that playing hard is an adjustment and that s what we had to do at halftime and we did explained coach Cheryl Reeve whose unit was down points at halftime In the fourth quarter we lost our ball pressure again we didn t guard again We did it for one quarter at present Napheesa Collier once again lit up the points sheet with points eight rebounds seven assists four steals and two blocks in almost minutes of action Nine of of those points came in the final when the Lynx - thrillingly turned a -point deficit into a three-point tournament in the final seconds and the sellout crowd of was rocking Collier had seven points in the final including a jumper with ticks remaining She then stole the inbounds pass along the baseline less than three seconds later but her momentum forced her to step out of bounds before she could get the ball to a teammate The positives of the final limited minutes are not something Reeve will dwell on We didn t lay down That doesn t mean a whole lot to us that s what you re supposed to do but we had bigger problems on the night We just didn t come to play defensively We were really easy to play against in the first half Offensively we gave into their physicality It s not new for us we saw it in Atlanta That was June a meeting the Lynx won - in overtime Collier was of from the field Minnesota s other four starters were a combined for I thought Phee was the only one playing with great aggression she just didn t much help Reeve commented Alanna Smith finished with points Courtney Williams had to go with nine assists Kayla McBride and Bridget Carleton combined for four points Natisha Hiedeman had all of her points off the bench in the fourth quarter Brittney Griner Atlanta s -foot- agile center scored of her season-high points in first half when the Dream shot and opened a - lead at the break She entered averaging per battle Coming out in that first half like that really set us back but we got back on track in the second half Collier declared That started with the defensive pressure Providing a bolt of power off the bench Diamond Miller s aggression on both ends helped set the tone as Atlanta - made just five of shots in the third quarter and Minnesota got within three before the Dream led - at quarter s end We were sporadic in our aggression When we did it we were pretty effective Reeve revealed The Dream then made their first six shots of the fourth to push the lead to - Related Articles Lynx dominate Las Vegas Aces with another full squad effort Lynx s Courtney Williams loves these sneaks but gets fined for wearing them Lynx start slow before routing Sky Lynx Phee makes WNBA All-Star Contest her own The moments that made three Lynx teammates all-stars