Minnesota Lynx complete sweep of the Dream, 73-61 in game three

LYNX WIN 2011 WNBA TITLE

Billboard across from the Target Center in Minneapolis

In a three game sweep, the Minnesota Lynx won the 2011 WNBA Championship in the league’s best-of-five series. The 73-61 victory gave the Lynx the franchise’s first WNBA Championship. Minnesota dominated the postseason competition with a first round series victory over San Antonio followed by a sweep of Phoenix.

Led by Seimone Augustus, the Lynx managed to slow down the most prolific scorer of the playoffs, Dream forward Angel McCoughtry, with stifling defense.

McCoughtry who scored 33 points in game one and 38 in game two, finished with 22 points on Friday night. Augustus, who was named the series MVP, had 16 while Lynx rookie Maya Moore scored 15.

Early on, the Dream looked as if they might come out on top and earn a win. After the first quarter they led 19-12 and at halftime had a 37-33 lead. But during the third quarter the Lynx tied the game up twice and ended the period on an 11-4 run. At the beginning of the fourth quarter, the Lynx led 52-45.

“Honestly we didn’t change anything game wise,” said Reeve. “We felt like game two wasn’t a good game for us, no disrespect to Atlanta but we didn’t play very well and with us it starts with defense. We felt like we didn’t show them who we were defensively in those two games, so we tried to do everything better, exact same scheme, minor things, we started trapping Angel McCoughtry everywhere, instead of just in the middle of floor and we tried to make her touches more difficult.”

She praised the defense of Augustus on McCoughtry

“I thought Seimone did a great job of making it tougher for her, and she still got 25 shots and she’s a great player.”

Augusuts also thought her team better job defending McCoughtry than in previous game. What did the Lynx do to contain McCoughtry?

“Something we should have been doing in the first game, dictating, making every pass difficult, deny her touches, and when she tried to attack, contain her, stand in front of her, make her night difficult,” said Augustus. “I think we’re closer than we were in previous nights in containing her and contesting her shoots, the other nights she had a little more room and tonight we smothered her and forced her into bad shots.”

Reeve knew that she had a great team in the Lynx at the beginning of the season but became confident that they could win the championship after the all-star break.

“I always go back through time and as we move through the times, we had a great training camp,” se commented on talking about her thoughts throughout the season. “I’ve been a part of many of them, and the way they approach their daily practices and their time together was so impressive and I thought we had a chance to be good, I didn’t know how good. Probably halfway through the season, just after all-star break, when we tried to prepare them for how hard it was going to get for us, we never talked about the things that the media was talking about. The Minnesota Lynx was going to collapse, that sort of thing, we never focused on that, this group was on the day-to-day tasks, and so focused.”

A Championship parade and rally will take place on Tuesday, October 11 at 11:30 a.m. in downtown Minneapolis.