Alexander Shun

Web Editor Associate | @alexpshun 

After suffering a 75-69 home loss in game one of the WNBA Finals on Sunday afternoon, the Minnesota Lynx are determined.

“We have to do what we do,” Lynx guard Seimone Augustus said when asked what the team’s mindset was heading into game two. “I think we got out of sync of doing what we normally do as a team and once we did start to do it, we saw the success that we were having. So we want to have that jump right from the start.”

“Taking care of home,” Lynx center Sylvia Fowles said. “This is our home-court and there are things that we do so well that got us to this point that we got away from in the first game.”

Not including the five turnovers, Fowles herself turned in a solid performance on Sunday afternoon, notching a double-double and finishing with 21 points and 11 rebounds. Fowles admits though, the opportunity to do even better was there.

“It’s kind of the beauty of a five-game series. You get to go back and look at all the opportunities that you did have and how you can clean up in those areas. But I feel like we had opportunities and we just weren’t able to utilize them.”

A quick glance at the game one box score and one can tell that free-throws were a definite killer for Minnesota, having finished just 15-of-23 (65.2 percent) from the line. Scan the box score a little more and one would see the 12 offensive rebounds that Indiana grabbed which, of course, leads one to see that the Fever had 22 second-chance points. These little things are what seemingly led to Minnesota’s defeat. Let’s go back to the box score just one more time.

The Lynx made it to the free-throw line 23 times while the Fever made it just 16 times (although Indiana was a perfect 100 percent from the line), so the opportunities for the Lynx were there. Minnesota shot 42 percent from the floor while Indiana shot only 36 percent. Sure, the Fever made five three-pointers as compared to Minnesota’s two, but four of the Fever’s threes came off offensive rebounds that led to second-chances for Indiana. So what is the point in all these stats?

The point is, Minnesota played well and had their chances to win the game, or at the very least take control of the game for a bit. Missed opportunities are something that the Lynx can look at and improve upon entering game two. Or at least one would think.

“We could walk out of here and go, ‘Well we just gotta keep em off the glass,'” Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve said. “Well that’s not exactly what the situation was all the time…It’s really obvious we can just go, ‘well second-chance points hurt you,’ but it doesn’t just get fixed when we go out there for the next game. What exactly created those situations that we could try and eliminate?”

As for the free-throw shooting that struggles…

“Not making [free-throws]? No i enjoyed that part,” Reeve joked when asked about her teams uncharacteristically low percentage from the line. “We have been one of the best free-throw shooting teams all season, it just didn’t work out for us last night.”

Make no mistake, Indiana played well on Sunday afternoon and both Lynx players and Lynx coaches recognize that, but with the slew of uncharacteristic mistakes on Minnesota’s side, the phrase heard most throughout practice was, “missed opportunities.”

“I thought we had a lot of chances,” guard Lindsay Whalen said. “A lot of missed opportunities that we didn’t convert on. Missed free-throws, things like that that were unfortunate when things like that happen, but it’s over now and we have to do what we can to get ready for tomorrow night.”

“We found some areas that we should have had like when jump-balls started,” Fowles said. “Like I said, it’s a five-game series and things aren’t going to be perfect and always go the way we planned but we just have to keep pushing forward.”

Facing a 1-0 series deficit now one would assume that game two, the second of three home games in the series for Minnesota, would be viewed as a must-win game; not so fast though.

“Every game feels like a must-win for both teams, for both sides, so that’s not new,” forward Maya Moore said. “That reality is a part of being in the Finals. Every team wants to win every game because every game is so valuable with a five game series…We definitely want to win, but how we do that is where our focus will be.”

The Lynx play game two on Tuesday night at Target Center before traveling to Indiana for game’s three and four. Game two will be tough, just as tough as game one was, but if there’s one thing we know about this Lynx team, it’s that they’re a resilient group; Moore and the Lynx will bounce back.

“They got one from us here and now we have to go out and play better in game two. We’ll be prepared and we will be ready for it.”