Aces return from lengthy break with franchise’s first win on Canadian soil

Las Vegas got a much needed break in the form of an eight-day rest ahead of its first-ever meeting with Toronto.

In the franchise’s first trip to Canada, the Aces tagged the Tempo, 109-83, from the Coca-Cola Coliseum Monday, July 20. Opposing head coach Sandy Brondello was not in attendance after serving a one-game suspension for making an “inappropriate comment” toward Atlanta Dream forward Angel Reese.

With so much time off, Las Vegas had slipped to the third spot in the league standings. At the time, it sat behind Minnesota (20-6) and Golden State (19-7) with its 17-7 overall record.

Now sitting at 18-7 on the year, the Aces are in addition to that, 11-2 away from home this season.

“We kind of have a bunker mentality on the road,” head coach Becky Hammon said. “I want that bunker mentality at home but I’m a coach, I want it all.”

Monday served as the penultimate game before the all-star break for the defending champions. The first half of the season concludes Wednesday, July 22 when the team travels to Washington D.C. for a date with the Mystics.

That tip-off is scheduled for 4:30 p.m.

“We just want to continue to gain momentum,” Hammon said. “We’re still in the process of trying to get better. We’re not a championship product yet, we’re working our way there.”

Hammon took a timeout just over a minute and a half into the contest after her team allowed four offensive rebounds in the first 1:38 of the game. Coming out of that timeout, that same Aces squad went on a 10-4 run to put themselves in the game.

“They were on pace to have a 64-point quarter if we kept going at that clip,” Hammon said. “That ain’t gonna work for me. It was 8-2, nothing dramatic, but they were just missing [...] It was moreso an attention grab.”

Las Vegas connected on four of its first five three-point attempts before ultimately making 14 longballs in the win. Five different players recorded at least two made threes en route to the victory while three tallied three or more.

Guard Chelsea Gray started a perfect 3-for-3 from deep on her way to 14 points on 4-of-7 shooting to go along with seven assists.

“We worked a lot of trying to get ourselves in the paint and get those spray out threes,” Hammon said. “We haven’t shot it great in our last five games so it was nice to get a game where we shot it well and we had a decent amount of volume to our threes.”

Guard Jackie Young posted a game-high four made threes beginning with 12 first quarter points. By the final buzzer, she racked up 24 points with four made threes coupled with a game-high 12 assists.

The guard tandem of Gray and Young combined to dish out 19 of the team’s 29 assists in the win.

Reigning MVP A’ja Wilson tallied 19 points in the first half on her way to 26 points which shared for the game-high along with Toronto forward Isabelle Harrison. She also added three three-point makes on three attempts while blocking four shots.

“[My offense is] growing,” Wilson said. “It’s always good when you can see the ball go through the hoop a couple of times. I actually kind of did some reverse psychology to myself because I was missing a lot in the last month. So I kind of just stopped working on it for a little bit just to try to train my mind that it’s just muscle memory.”

Fellow Aces NaLyssa Smith and Jewell Loyd reached double-digit scoring outputs with 18 points and 11 points respectively. As a team, Las Vegas shot 58% in the win while holding its opponent to 39% from the floor and 26% from deep.

“For us to have the slippage we had in the beginning of the game is unacceptable on our end,” Wilson said. “So yeah, [Hammon] spazzed but I think the biggest thing I was proud of was as a team we kind of held each other accountable.”