Marina Mabrey put on a show against the Dallas Wings on Friday July 10th to a record breaking crowd of 20,996 at the Montreal Bell Centre. Despite leading at the end of the third quarter, the Tempo weren’t able to hold on, losing 108 – 95.
The Good
This game was an exciting nail biter for the first three quarters. Mabrey went on a tear to start the game, hitting 4 threes in the first 5 minutes alone! 17 points in the first quarter is absolutely MVP behaviour.
Juskaite continues to put up solid numbers and help anchor the team. When Mabrey got into foul trouble at the beginning of the second quarter, Juskaite stepped up with 12 points, shooting 83% from the field and hitting 2 threes!
The team is playing well, all things considered. Missing four key players (Sykes, Sabally, Rice, and Fagbenle) and keeping up with such a dynamic team (who are in 4th place, by the way) is no small feat!
Selling out the Bell Centre and setting a new WNBA attendance record is proving Canada has a huge appetite for women’s sports. The fan base is strong and people are excited! It really feels like we are building a great community, and the home court advantage is real.
The Bad
This is our fourth loss in a row. This game felt so attainable after the first quarter! But the back and forth really wore everyone down. We led at the end of each of the first three quarters, but we only outscored Dallas in the first quarter.
It feels like we lack depth, mostly from our injury situation. The Wings starting lineup has been the same for their past 10 games! We can only wish to have that sort of consistency at some point.
We fully collapsed in the fourth quarter. Not having the bench hurts, and it felt like our starters ran out of steam. Paige was nearly unstoppable putting up 34 points. We really need to be able to lock down star players and mitigate their impact. But this takes energy, and no breaks for the starters make this feel impossible.
Scoring only 10 points in the fourth hurts and hopefully Sandy has a plan to prevent this from continuing to happen in future games.
The Outlook
The Tempo play New York on Sunday, again at the Bell Centre in Montreal. New York also lost to Dallas last week and are playing Minnesota as I write this! Having back-to-back games is always tough on a team, even when they are as seasoned as New York. This may be a big advantage for us. Hopefully the combination of a tired opponent and a packed Bell Centre will help us pull out a W and turn this losing streak around!