Mercury’s win over Dream clinches home playoff game

By Scott Mammoser

PHOENIX- Diana Taurasi, Brittney Griner and DeWanna Bonner seem to be peaking just in time for the playoffs. The All-Star trio all recorded double-doubles to lead the Phoenix Mercury to a 104-95 win over the Atlanta Dream on Friday. The win puts the Mercury (19-14) in sixth place entering the final regular season game at 3 p.m. on Sunday against the New York Liberty (7-26). The Dream (22-11) is in Las Vegas (14-19) at the same time on Sunday, and it is holding on to the tiebreaker with the Mystics (22-11) for the second seed and double byes.

Mercury Clinches Home Playoff Game in Victory over Dream

Guaranteed either a fifth-or-sixth-place finish now locks the Mercury into a single elimination home playoff game on Tuesday night at Wells Fargo Arena on the campus of Arizona State University. This time and opponent are to be determined.

“We’re shooting the ball well and we have that confidence,” Mercury coach Sandy Brondello said. “Every game is a new challenge for us, and I think we did a good job of executing the scout for the most part.”

In addition to scoring 27 points, Taurasi equaled her career high of 14 assists. In her 15-year Hall of Fame career, you only need to go back to Sunday’s win over the Sparks to find the only other time Taurasi dished out 14.

“Atlanta has been playing really well,” Taurasi said. “And, we’ve been on a little roll lately, just playing better. A lot of people are getting more comfortable with certain things we are trying to do. Our spacing is getting better, we’re concentrating on where we want to trap and doing a better job exploiting that.”

Griner scored 33 with 18 rebounds, going over 3,000 points for her career, while Bonner scored 21 and equaled her career best with 16 rebounds and seven assists.

Also stepping up for the Mercury was Briann January with 16 points, and the ASU assistant coach will return to play on the court where she played collegiately for the playoff game.

The Dream, playing in the wake of losing two-time Olympic gold medalist Angel McCoughtry for the season, also lost Brittney Sykes, the second-year player from Syracuse averaging 10 points per game, who was ejected midway through the third quarter. Alex Bentley led Atlanta off the bench with a season-high 24 points and personal-best 6-of-8 performance from downtown. Tiffany Hayes scored 21, as well.

“We are just focused right now,” Bonner said. “We’re getting there, you can never just say we’re getting there. You can’t get too high or too low, we know what we need to do, it’s a grind, and right now, we are just riding the wave because we can’t have any mishaps at this point of the season.”