Courtney Williams spoke about the postseason grind after the Minnesota Lynx’s 77-70 Game 2 victory over the Connecticut Sun, which evened the series at 1-1.
“Cheryl [Reeve] keeps telling us that’s why people cry when they win a championship because it’s hard,” Williams said, smirking before finishing her statement, “and it’s hard.”
The second game of the series was a hard-fought win for the Lynx. It had everything you’d expect in a game between two teams with top-ranked defenses in the regular season. The Lynx and Sun started the game shooting 0 for 14 combined. There was plenty of trash-talking, technicals, and hard fouls that almost turned into fights.
Minnesota won Game 2 mainly because of its free-agent signings, Williams and Alanna Smith. Connecticut held Napheesa Collier to nine points, but Williams and Smith sealed the game in the third and fourth quarters.
Williams was poised for a bounce-back game. In Game 1, she went 3 of 12 for eight points and three turnovers, including 0 for 4 in the fourth quarter. With her father sitting courtside in Game 2, Williams played a significantly better game. After the game, she said she had to “change the narrative” regarding her struggles with her parents in attendance.
Williams did that in Game 2, scoring a Lynx team-leading 17 points on a much more efficient 6 of 13 shooting, 5 rebounds, and four assists. That included an 11-point outburst in the fourth quarter, where she shot a perfect 3 of 3 from the field and 4 of 4 from the free-throw line.
Williams also scored the last four points for the Lynx, keeping the game out of reach. “I was a lot more aggressive,” she said after the game. “Ya, I had to turn it up.”
Smith also had the bounce-back game that Cheryl Reeve was expecting.
“Lan(smith) will bounce back,” Reeve said after Game 1. “Offensively, we didn’t play our best, and we will be better on Tuesday.”
Smith bounced back, scoring 15 points on 6 of 8 shooting, going 3 for 4 from three. She also knocked down her final four shots of the game. After going 2 of 11 from three in the first three playoff games, Smith was crucial in the offensive rotation, making threes when the Sun doubled Collier.
The Lynx needed Williams and Smith to have bounce-back games. Collier had a 2024 season- and playoff-low nine points, something she hadn’t done since Minnesota’s 78-73 loss to Connecticut on July 4. That was the game she left early after 24 minutes with a plantar fasciitis injury that shelved her until after the Olympic break.
Regardless, Connecticut seems to have figured out how to contain Collier better than any other team in the league.
“I think AT (Thomas) always does a real good job of making things difficult for [Collier],” Sun coach Stephanie White said after the game. “But they showed as a team, why they have been so successful, they’re so balanced.”
The Lynx survived an old-fashioned slugfest of a playoff game because of the balance and team mentality White described.
If the Lynx hope to steal a game in Connecticut and send the series back to Minneapolis, they are going to need more of the same from players like Williams and Smith and a bounce-back game from Collier. Championships are hard, and if the Lynx want to win one this season, they must continue to play tough and win these rock fights.
