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Las Vegas moves onto semifinals after last-second defensive stance against Seattle
- Terrel Emerson
- Sep 18
- 3 min read
Through the six games both in the regular season and the playoffs, the Las Vegas Aces and Seattle Storm split but they needed just one point of separation in the final meeting of the year between the clubs.
Las Vegas edged Seattle, 74-73, Thursday, Sept. 18 from the Michelob Ultra Arena in a decisive Game 3 of the pairs’ first round matchup. The Aces have now won 20 of their last 22 contests.
“I don’t know, we kind of stole one there,” head coach Becky Hammon said. “Obviously, we were trying to get [forward A’ja Wilson] the ball, trying to get certain people off A’ja although tonight it didn’t matter who guarded her. She was just on a heater.”
After surviving the win-or-go-home scenario, Las Vegas’ playoff life still beats as the team prepares for the WNBA semifinals against Indiana. During the regular season, the Fever took two of the three meetings with neither team having seen the other since late July.
That series is set to begin Sunday, Sept. 21 from Michelob Ultra Arena with tip-off set for 12 p.m.
“They haven’t seen the real Aces yet,” Hammon said. “They caught us in a bit of turmoil. Not only that, they whooped us one of those stretches. We’ll buckle in and hone in where we can and take care of business.”
Up a point with a tick under 12 and a half seconds left in regulation, the Aces needed a stern defensive stance to preserve the series-clinching win. It was the team’s constant scrappiness that helped save the team from elimination on its home floor.
“That’s a very good team,” Hammon said. “They have a former MVP over there, they have Olympians over there – that’s a very good team. So we knew it was going to be a dogfight. I thought maybe they might even give Minnesota a run because they split with them during the regular season.”
Seattle took its first lead of the second half late in the fourth quarter with 1:14 left on the clock. Off a miss from Wilson, opposing guard Erica Wheeler gave the visitors the lead again with 18.7 left.
Another Wilson miss on the ensuing possession allowed for the game-winning putback from Young.
“Obviously, we’re going to A at the end of the game and we have a lot of faith in her,” guard Jackie Young said. “We think that every shot that she shoots is going in. But when it left [her hands] I saw it was a little bit off to the right so it was either going to bounce in or it’s going to come off just right.”
Young ended the night with 14 points on 6-of-12 shooting including her game-winner.
“Jack’s putback was ridiculous,” Hammon said. “We’ve been harping [on] crashing the boards the whole time and Jack was right on time with that one.”
While enduring a couple of misses late, Wilson poured in a game-high 38 points on 14-of-26 from the field as she helped her team stave off elimination. She added five rebounds, three assists, three steals and two blocks after being named Defensive Player of the Year for the third time in her career.
Even with the defensive stance, Hammon pointed to the 19-7 second quarter for her team as the main reason for the team’s eventual win. In total, the Aces held their opponents to less than 40% shooting from the field including a 39% mark from three-point range.
“We win that game in the second quarter when we hold them to seven [points],” Hammon said. “That’s how we won the game, it was the defensive end. Seventy-three is our magic number. We’re 11-1 – well, now 12-1 when we hold teams to 73 [points] or less.”
As a team, Las Vegas scored 42 points in the paint while winning the battle by 10. A lot of the work was done without forward NaLyssa Smith on the floor as she battled foul trouble for a vast majority of the game. She was limited to just over 18 minutes as she left the floor with two points, four rebounds, two assists but five fouls.
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