Minnesota walks into Mohegan Sun on Sunday carrying a three-game losing streak, and the cure is sitting right there in the standings: a 10-31 Connecticut team playing out the string.
The Lynx are 31-10, the league’s best record and the No. 1 overall seed. Friday did not change that: a flat 93-81 loss to New York at Target Center, the third straight L. Golden State (30-11) can only chase Minnesota, not pass it, as long as the Lynx handle the games in front of them. Connecticut is the easiest of those games by a wide margin.
Friday’s sloppiness was fixable: nineteen days off for the World Cup break, 6-for-22 from three, 19 turnovers New York cashed into 21 points.
The layoff blunted everyone’s timing, and it showed. Cheryl Reeve doesn’t need a speech for this one. She needs her team to stop handing the ball to the other side.
The matchups that decide it
Start with Olivia Miles against Connecticut’s guards. Miles has run this offense all year at 19.7 points and 5.9 assists a night. On Friday, she tied Caitlin Clark’s rookie scoring record of 769 points. Connecticut hasn’t shown anyone who can apply that kind of ball pressure. Miles gets downhill whenever she wants.
Then Collier inside. She’s averaging 17.7 points and 7.3 rebounds a game since her July return, shooting it well from three on real volume. Connecticut leans on Brittney Griner (13.2 ppg), who is day-to-day with a knee. If she sits, the Sun have no one left to keep Collier off the block.
The third one is quieter: Kayla McBride against whoever Connecticut can spare. McBride is scorching, at 18.8 points over her last 10 games. A team shooting cold wants a defense that can’t close out on shooters, and Connecticut has struggled to do exactly that all year.
The storyline: Miles is chasing history
Track Miles here. She’s one big night away from passing Clark’s rookie scoring mark outright, and she’s doing it as the engine of a contender rather than a lottery team. I’ve watched plenty of rookie point guards get handed the keys and put the car in a ditch; Miles has driven this thing to the best record in the league.
She isn’t just scoring, either — she’s near six assists and five rebounds a night while she does it.
The record is the headline; the two-way floor game is what should scare the rest of the West.
The thing that beats this Sun team
It’s not complicated: take care of the ball and knock down the open ones. Connecticut struggles badly against winning teams, losing those games by letting good offenses get whatever they want. Minnesota can shoot it with anyone in the league when the looks are clean. Cut the turnovers from 19 to something human, let McBride and Collier hunt from deep, and the Sun don’t have the bodies to keep pace for 40 minutes.
What to watch
Watch the first six minutes. If the Lynx come out careless again, the game stays closer than it should for a quarter. It won’t hold. Connecticut is 10-31 and playing out its final season in Uncasville before the franchise moves to Houston in 2027; a roster this thin has no fourth-quarter answer for a healthy contender. Somewhere in the second half, Reeve’s group remembers what it is.
The seeding stakes are simple: Minnesota controls its own path to the top overall seed and can close it out this week. Sunday is the softest door left to walk through.
Prediction: Lynx by 15. The skid ends against a team already halfway to Texas.
