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Browsing: Mud
Nearly two months to the day after a 53-point loss dropped their record to 14-14, the Las Vegas Aces clinched a berth in the WNBA Finals with a victory over the Indiana Fever in Game 5 of the playoff semifinals on Tuesday.
Following the 107-98 overtime victory against the Fever, A’Ja Wilson told reporters that the Aces “went through the mud” this season to reach this point.
“Obviously, we’re not complacent. It’s not an, ‘Oh, we’re happy to be here,’ because we worked our butts off to get here, but it does definitely feel a lot different than the ones before only because we went through the mud for this. Like Coach always says, we weren’t necessarily buried, we were planted. We sometimes had to let the soil get moisture and then we had to grow. Now we’re still growing.”
After being one of the most dominant teams in the league for five years from 2020 to ’24, winning back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2023, the Aces spent the first two months of this season trying to figure things out.
The low point came on Aug. 2 when the Aces suffered a 111-58 loss to the Minnesota Lynx.
“We started the oven for them,” head coach Becky Hammon said after that game. “They were on a heater, and we lit the gas up by being out of position. … We did everything at a Grade F today.”
That game proved to be a positive turning point. The Aces won 16 straight games to close the regular season and earn the No. 2 seed in the playoffs. They have been pushed so far in the playoffs, going the distance in each of the first two rounds before surviving at home in the deciding game.
Tuesday’s win was led by Wilson, who won her fourth career MVP award this season, and Jackie Young. The All-Star duo combined for 67 points, 15 assists and 12 rebounds. Both of them played more than 40 minutes in Game 5.
The celebration will be short-lived because the Aces will get set to host the Phoenix Mercury in Game 1 of the WNBA Finals on Friday. Las Vegas won three of four head-to-head meetings between the two teams during the regular season.