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WNBA Finals: Indiana Takes Game Three, 86-85, Thanks to Head Butt and Late Goal Line Stand
By Bob Corwin
Correspondent
& Lee Michaelson
Publisher
Photo Caption: Yes, you have the right website. But Game Three of the WNBA Finals came down to a goal-line stand in the final seconds, by the Indiana Fever, who held off the vaunted Phoenix Mercury offense for two straight minutes, to seal an 86-85 win and take the series’ lead, two games to one.
Photo Credit: Courtesy istockphoto.com©
It all came down to a head butt and a last-ditch goal-line stand.
No, the Indianapolis Colts were four blocks away at Lucas Oil Stadium, where they had just finished playing football, winning handily over the Seattle Seahawks. But at nearby Conseco Fieldhouse, it was fourth (quarter) and one (a one-point Indiana lead), and it was the Indiana Fever who executed the goal-line stand of the day to pull out the crucial win. The Fever held the Phoenix Mercury scoreless over the last two minutes of the game and disrupted a critical last-ditch Mercury attack on the goal to take a two games-to-one lead in the best-of-five series by the narrowest of margins—a single point.
“We battled today,” said the Mercury’s Cappie Pondexter. “We really did, on both ends of the floor, and it sucks when you lose by one point with a hard-fought game like that.”
“Lose by a head butt. Check it out,” added her teammate, the league’s MVP, Diana Taurasi.
Taurasi was talking about a technical foul that had been called on her a little less than five minutes before the clock ran out on the Mercury. The free throw, sunk by Indiana’s Tamika Catchings, gave the Fever their one-point advantage.
 | Photo Caption: The Indiana Fever’s Tamika Catchings sinks the free throw on a dubious technical against Diana Taurasi in the middle of the fourth quarter. The point would prove to be the margin of victory, but before anyone starts feeling too sorry for Taurasi and the Mercury, they should take into account the fact that Taurasi had escaped a “T” earlier in the game when, after being fouled by Ebony Hoffman on the way to the hoop, Taurasi slammed her hand hard on the floor hard and uttered, loudly, an epithet that rhymes with “duck.” In the end, things have a way of evening out, and most of the game’s questionable calls went against the Fever. |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
Taurasi had just taken Tangela Smith’s hand-off and driven it to the hoop to lay it in, completing one of only six successful field goal attempts she had managed to make in the entire game. There was incidental contact on the play, but no whistle. Taurasi found herself on the deck. As she re-entered the court after scoring, Taursi collided with Indiana’s Katie Douglas who was approaching from the other side. Douglas doubled over, clutching her abdomen. Whistles blew this time.
“I was laying [sic] on the floor, I got up to run down the court, and my head, as I was coming up, and she [Indiana’s Katie Douglas] was coming this way, and, you know, we collided,” said Taurasi.
The refs (but few others in the arena, including most of press row) saw it differently.. “He said I elbowed her, which you clearly watched the replay, I don’t think there was an elbow thrown,” said Taurasi, adding, “She did mess up my bun though, so she should get a technical for that.”
Douglas herself didn’t disagree. “Regarding the technical, I think it was just organized chaos. I don’t know what happened. I really don’t know. It was just kinda—I told her I didn’t think it was intentional, but it’s whatever the refs see,” said Douglas. “I don’t complain. I keep moving. The refs are always right in my book.”
“Oh yeah” Indiana teammate Tamika Catchings quickly retorted. “Okay. Not always. Not in my book!”
Catchings has a point. Though is doubtful one would get a call such as this at this point in a NBA playoff game, don’t cry too quickly for Phoenix and their phantom technical. Neither Catchings, nor Coach Lin Dunn, who spent much of the afternoon on the sidelines nearly apoplectic about the calls, criticized the officials or any specific call after the game. But they had ample grounds for complaint.
As in Game One, it appeared critical calls, several of them coming late in the game were not going the way of the Fever. Late in the fourth quarter with the score 84-83 in Indiana’s favor, Pondexter missed on a driving layup. With the loose ball being fought over by the Mercury’s Le’coe Willingham and the Fever’s Catchings, Pondexter signaled for a time out in spite of there being no clear possession. Surprisingly, she received one from Referee June Courteau with 2:15 left on the clock. (Hold that thought, for a minute.)
On the ensuing possession, Penny Taylor hit a floater in the lane to give Phoenix the lead, 85-84, with 2:09 to go. Over the next minute, the Fever turned the ball over twice as Tammy Sutton-Brown mishandled the ball and Catchings made a bad pass to Sutton-Brown. Thus, the Mercury had two chances to widen their lead but Pondexter missed a jumper and Taurasi missed a wide open three-ball, which might have sealed the win. Instead Sutton-Brown corralled her third defensive board with 1:14 left.
With 57 seconds left, the Fever reversed the ball to the left side of the court and Ebony Hoffman, who had dislocated her shoulder at the end of the third quarter, headed straight to the locker room without even stopping at the bench, popped it back in, and was now playing heavily taped, hit a baseline jumper that originally was scored as a three. But the officials (Courteau, Clarke Stevens and Eric Brewton), who struggled to control the game much of the night, huddled, then reviewed the play on video, ultimately getting this one right as Hoffman’s toe was touching the line just before she went airborne to shoot. But though it might have been centimeters shy of a trey, Hoffman’s shot was huge, giving the home side an 86-85 lead with 57 seconds still on the clock.
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| Photo Caption: So near, and yet so far ... Ebony Hoffman’s game-winning jumper, initially ruled a three, was declared a two after the referees reviewed video that showed her foot had been on the three-point arc just before she took to the air. Though the crowd disagreed (strenuously), the refs got this one right. |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
For much of the final period, Cappie Pondexter seemed to have decided, as she did in Game Two, that she would put the outcome of the game on her own shoulders, and with similar results. With 49 seconds left, she drove the key but missed with Catchings ensnaring one of her game-high 12 boards. Over the next dozen seconds, Sutton-Brown missed two point-blank lay-ups. She rebounded one and reserve Fever point guard Briann January, who was strong off the bench with 17 points and two assists, pulled down the second. The Arizona State product attempted to drive the key but dribbled the ball off her foot, her only turnover of the day but potentially fatal one with 22 ticks remaining.
Pondexter, who assumed the point guard role as Phoenix turned to its “power line-up” for much of the stretch drive, brought the ball up the court guarded first by January and then in a switch by Douglas. Her jumper with six seconds left was off target and Catchings again rebounded the miss in spite of considerable contact as she came down. She tried to call time out, but though to most on the press row it appeared she had possession, albeit briefly, was denied by the same officiating crew who, you will remember, had awarded Pondexter a time-out without possession less than two minutes earlier. The officials instead called a jump-ball between Catchings and Willingham, who won the ensuing tap.
The Fever had called a time-out just prior to this play, and one of the things Catchings was most conscious of as she came down with the ball was the need to call an immediate time-out before putting the ball on the floor. “One of the things things going into the time-out, coming back out, just off a rebound or whatever, was just calling time-out when we got the rebound, because if you get the rebound and you dribble, you can’t advance the ball. So I got the rebound, [and was] looking around for a referee to try to call time-out, but Le’coe [Willingham] got there, and I guess they felt like her hands were on the ball. So he ... called a jump ball. but it doesn’t matter, because we won, thank God!”
Now it was the Mercury who called time out with 3.4 seconds on the clock. Phoenix Coach Corey Gaines described the play he had cooked up. “They play was for Penny Taylor to get a down pick from Tangela [Smith]. Cappie [Pondexter] takes the ball out-of-bounds, Kelly Mazzante is in the corner, Di [Diana Taurasi] is in the corner to draw the defense.”
“As Penny is coming up to get the ball, she is mysteriously bumped off her line to get the ball,” Gaines added in an obvious barb directed at the refs. “She goes up to get the ball, she can’t get it. The ball by the grace of god falls into Tangela’s hands, and the play was set for Penny to get the ball, turn and face and go to the basket.”
Meanwhile, in the Fever’s huddle, Dunn was trying to prepare her squad to defend against the multitude of weapons in the Mercury’s arsenal. “We had a foul to give, we were prepared to take it, but we wanted to be careful that they didn’t just catch the ball and sling it, and now we’ve given ‘em a three-point—three shots,” Dunn explained. So it was, get a stop, switch, after the ball comes in, switch if there is a good screen, keep ‘em in front of ya, you know, play great defense. And I thought our players rose to the occasion there.”
“I mean, they have so many play-makers out there with Cappie [Pondexter], Penny [Taylor], Diana [Taurasi],” added Indiana’s Katie Douglas. “We talked, Coach Dunn definitely told us some plays that she felt like they could run, but, you know, I don’t think that it was that play we talked about. “We thought it was going to be something else. ... We had one foul to give, and it’s so hard to foul in that one moment, because they’re such great players at this level. They can throw it up and be in the act of shooting. ... So we really relied on our defense and communicating with one another and talking, you know, when you couldn’t see what’s behind you.”
As the play unfolded on the floor, Pondexter attempted to inbound to Penny Taylor, but unheralded Indiana reserve Jessica Moore denied her the entry pass, forcing the ball to go instead to Tangela Smith, who had struggled from the field all evening. Smith took a contested off-balance jumper with less than two second left. Though it was as hard to see in the arena as it was on television, the Fever’s Hoffman was credited with getting a piece of it. At least one TV commentator, ESPN’s Carolyn Peck, though Hoffman made contact with Smith on the play, but this, too, was not evident on the court or on TV, and frankly, given the lack of a whistle for all of the contact on Catchings’s rebound on the immediately prior play, a non-call would certainly have been appropriate for anything less flagrant on this play as well.
 | Photo Caption: With six-tenths of a second left in the ballgame, the Mercury’s Tangela Smith (50) puts up what might have been the go-ahead shot, in a play originally designed for Penny Taylor. Despite having dislocated her shoulder at the end of the third quarter, the Fever’s Ebony Hoffman returned to the floor, heavily taped, and was able to get a hand on the shot to give her team the win. |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
As it was, Catchings yet again rebounded a Mercury miss, this time as the horn blew! Indiana had shut out the vaunted Phoenix offense for over the last two minutes of the game.
The crowd, announced as a sell-out of 18,165, went wild. This time no angelic benefactor appeared to buy out a major section; instead, the fans got their tickets the old-fashioned way—they bought them, either at the box office or from the busy scalpers outside the stadium—and while there may have been a few empty seats, there weren’t many of them, particularly as the game progressed. (More vacancies might have appeared on television in the early going, as the game was played right after the completion of the nearby Colts football, causing parking nightmares for many.)
The Fever Pull Out to an Early Lead
From the start of this, the closest game yet in this hotly contested battle of two champions, this contest was all about tempo and who got the better of the primary and secondary break opportunities as both teams struggled at times in the half-court setting. The Fever owe their success more to two critical runs—a 15-5 run at the opening of the first quarter and a 12-2 run to close out the third—than they do to the Taurasi technical or to any given call.
Although the box score lists the Fever as winning the battle of fast-break points, seven to six, a lot more damage was done by both sides off secondary breaks before the opposition was set. The Fever whipped out to a 15-5 lead at the 4:52 mark of the first quarter on back to back threes by Douglas and Catchings. As in Game One, it appeared Indiana was attempting to outrun Phoenix. Unlike Game One, the Fever adjusted that tempo at intervals throughout the game.
The Mercury man defense was largely ineffective as the Fever got good looks in and outside the paint. But midway through the first period, Phoenix switched to the 2-3 zone they call their “rover” defense, which features Diana Taurasi zoning the upper and mid-key areas. The Fever have struggled with this defense throughout the series, and once again, the change seemed to make it more difficult for the Fever to get quality looks in the paint.
Offensively, Pondexter took over for the Mercury, scoring their next four points and assisting on a Nicole Ohde basket to cut the lead to 15-11 with 3:51 left in quarter one. The remainder of the quarter featured two more Ohlde baskets (her best stretch of the playoffs) for the Mercury and, for the Fever, back-to-back buckets (a drive and a three-ball) by Ebony Hoffman. After one period, the score stood at 24-17 for the home side.
 | Photo Caption: Reserve center Nicole Ohlde (30) came up huge for the Mercury. Though she scored only six points, all of them came at a critical point in the first quarter, putting her team back into the game when the Fever were threatening to run away with it. |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
The difference in scoring was due to the Fever getting to the foul line more often, resulting in three extra points, and hitting 4/8 from behind the arc to 0/4 for the visitors, who actually shot marginally better from the field (8/18 or 44.4 percent) than the Fever (8/20 or 40 percent) in the opening period. Surprisingly, reserve Ohlde led her side with six points, while Hoffman, continuing her strong play in this series after a disappointing finish to the regular season, led Indiana with eight.
The Mercury Turn Things Around in the Second Period
The second period saw the visitors getting the better of the fast and secondary break opportunities. Briann January and Tamecka Dixon came off the bench to combine for Indiana’s first nine points. But though the Fever’s lead vascilated between four and nine points in the early minutes of the second quarter, the Mercury were able to gain little traction, shaving only one point off the Fever lead, with the score 33-27 after Dixon’s second basket at the 6:04 mark of the second frame.
Pondexter, who had a markedly better night than she had in Game Two, finishing with 23 points on 50 percent (11/22) field-goal shooting, was carrying her side at this point, with seven points thus far in the quarter as the Mercury appeared to be getting the better looks.
But in the remaining six minutes of the half, Taurasi put nine of her 10 first-half points on the board, while, Pondexter assisted on three Phoenix baskets and scored one more herself to bring her totals to a team-leading 13 points and five assists for the half.
 | Photo Caption: Diana Taurasi had her strongest segment in the second quarter, scoring nine of her 10 first-half points on three-of-four field-goal shooting. Though she finished with 18 points, she struggled from the field, and particularly from behind the arc, netting only three other field goals in the balance of the game. |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
The Fever continued to struggle against the “rover” defense, allowing the visitors to take their first lead of the game, 38-37, at the 3:09 mark in the second quarter as Willingham, fouled as she drove for a lay-up, converted the free-throw to make it a three-point play.
| Photo Caption: Le’coe Willingham, who finished with a career-playoffs high of 17 points, played a crucial role in shifting the momentum of the game, attacking the paint and getting herself to the foul line for seven points in the pivotal second quarter. |  |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
As Lin Dunn virtually pulled her hair out on the sidelines, the Phoenix lead grew to as large as six points (45-39) on a Taurasi three with 1:51 to go in the half. A Tully Bevilaqua three-ball (her last points of the game) with 14 seconds left in the half, sent the teams to the locker room with the Mercury still in the lead, but only by three points, 47-44. Until this game, the Mercury had been 5-0 when leading at the half in WNBA playoff games.
| Photo Caption: Good Grief! Fever Coach Lin Dunn was beside herself on the sidelines, between debatable calls going the Mercury’s way and her own team seeming intent on giving the game away in the second period. |  |
| Photo Caption: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
With easier looks in the quarter, the Mercury raised their first-half field goal percentage to 51.4 percent (19/37) to the Fever’s respectable 45.9 percent (17/37). In the second quarter, Phoenix out-rebounded the home team 10-4, nailed three treys to the Fever’s two, and paid five visits to the charity stripe (making them all) to none for Indiana.
The Fever’s two key players, Catchings and Douglas, combined for just 1-for-8 from the field in the second quarter. Though thanks to their strong opening period, the Fever continued to control the boards by an 18-12 margin, Indiana gave up all five of Phoenix’s second-chance points in the second quarter, to none for themselves, cutting the Fever’s lead in that key category to 5-8 in the opening half.
For the half, the Fever had still out-shot the Mercury on the perimeter, 6-3, but at halftime, Dunn implored her team to go more to the basket and settle for outside shots less readily. As the game was called, penetration to the basket was often rewarded with trips to the foul line so she definitely had the right idea.
January Puts the Game Back in Fever Hands in the Late Third Period
The Fever twice tied the score in the early minutes of the second half, but in spite of their coach’s pleading, the Fever continued to settle for outside shots for much of the third quarter, and a Penny Taylor jumper restored the Mercury to a 63-56 lead with 3:09 left in the stanza. The Phoenix “rover” defense continued to pay dividends. Katie Douglas led her team in the quarter to this point, nailing two triples and a lay-up to keep her team in contact with the better shooting visitors.
Ebony Hoffman hit a layup 14 seconds later to cut the Phoenix lead to five, but on the subsequent play Diana Taurasi was bailed out by a weak foul call on Tamika Catchings (her first of the game) on the perimeter, giving the league MVP three foul shots. Taurasi missed the first, but made the next two, putting the Mercury back up by seven.
But with 2:26 left on the third-quarter clock, the Fever turned up the heat on both ends of the floor. Shutting the Mercury down with an intensified man defense, the Fever got some favorable offensive transition going on a 12-2 run led by rookie Briann January’s 10-point outburst (two treys, a mid-range jumper and a pair from the line). The quarter closed with Indiana again leading, 70-67.
| Photo Caption: She may not have been the Rookie of the Year for 2009, but the Fever’s Briann January (20) has definitely been the Rookie of the Playoffs. Her 10-point burst at the end of the third period singlehandedly turned the game around for Indiana. |  |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
In the third quarter, Indiana hit four three’s to none for Phoenix and only turned the ball over once to the Mercury’s four miscues. Both teams shot worse in the quarter than they had earlier in the game, with the Mercury third-quarter shooting dropping to 40 percent from the field (8/20) and the Fever’s dropping slightly less to 42.1 percent (8/19). The Mercury managed to out-rebound the Fever, 10-9, in the period, and their margin in second-chance points was growing—8-3 for the third quarter alone.
Duking It Out to the Final Buzzer
Indiana managed to maintain its slim lead until the midway point of the final stanza when Diana Taurasi scored from a Tangela Smith feed to knot the score at 75 apiece. It was immediately after that basket that Taurasi was called for the debatable technical. Catchings converted the foul shot to give the Fever a one-point advantage.
Points came with difficulty for both sides for the remainder of the game, though that one-point lead changed hands six more times before the final buzzer.
Keys to the Game
Re-visiting our keys to this series:
Posts: Indiana’s Ebony Hoffman continued her strong shooting with team-high 18 points (6/7 from the field) including what proved to be the game winning three/two-ball. Hoffman continued her dominant play of this series both in the paint, where she was went three-for-four and from the perimeter, where she nailed two-out-of-three from long range. Tamika Catchings praised her teammate’s work ethic and marksmanship after the game:
“Ebony stepped up and hit that shot. Y’all don’t know how many years she has been practicing that shot. And for her to finally come around, and we were talking about how she ended the regular season. ‘Oh, she’s in a slump, this, that.’ But the playoffs, she stepped up her game, and she’s done such big things, especially in the Phoenix series, playing unbelievable, out of her mind, and that’s awesome for both of us to see that, especially with the hard work she has put in the previous years.”
As noted, Hoffman’s shoulder was dislocated when she went out near the end of the third quarter, and though the medical staff popped it back in and taped her, enabling her to return to the floor for game-winning shot, the Fever have to be hoping that Hoffman will be somewhere close to 100 percent for Game Four. Hoffman herself made no bones about her intention to play in that game:
“My shoulder just popped out and went back in. I’m double-joined. It’s just going to hurt.”
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| Photo Caption: (Left) Ebony Hoffman left the game, clutching her shoulder, in the final seconds of the third period of Game Three. She didn’t stop at the bench, but headed straight to the locker room, where, with the help of the medical staff, she popped it back into place. (Right) Hoffman returned to the game for the fourth quarter, ultimately reentering the game in time to put up the game-winning shot and block the go-ahead bucket by the Mercury’s Tangela Smith in the final second. While she says the shoulder is not about to stop her, she has been a huge factor in this series and it will be the Fever’s loss if she is not at the top of her form for Game Four. | |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson | |
As for the Fever’s other post player, Tammy Sutton-Brown missed way too many easy feeds from teammates and nearly caused her team to lose due to her 4/12 (9 points) shooting in this game, that included missed chippies (plus a turnover) in the game’s critical final seconds.
For Phoenix Le’coe Willingham set a career playoff high with 17 points on seven-of-11 field-goal shooting. (Willingham’s previous high was just nine points, also against Indiana, in 2007 as a member of the Connecticut Sun.) Remarkably, Willingham hauled down only five boards in the entire game and just one in the game’s final quarter, but it was her hustle after the loose ball that put Phoenix in a position (albeit an unrealized one) to pull out the win.
Tangela Smith had 10 boards but just five points on abysmal 2/11 (18.2 percent) shooting from the field, including a miss on the possible game winner.
Advantage: Call this about even, due to 15-to-eight rebounding edge for the visitors to offset the home side’s 27-to-22 post scoring edge. So far in the series, Indiana has gotten the better of the post match-ups.
Small Forward: Tamika Catchings notched her second double-double of this playoff series with 14 points and 12 rebounds. It marked the first time in WNBA Finals history that a player has posted two double-doubles in different categories. (In Game Two, Catchings had posted a double-double of 19 points and 11 assists, plus nine boards to make it a near triple-double.) However, scoring does not tell the full story, as once again, Catchings struggled from the field, with dreadful, 3/17 (17.6 percent) field-goal shooting, netting half of her points from the charity stripe, where she went a far more respectable seven-of-10.
However, Catchings enjoyed a superior floor game with seven assists, four steals and three blocks (but four turnovers) to accompany her 12 boards. She also did a superlative job of defense, guarding Taurasi, Pondexter and Taylor at different times during Game Three with primary responsibility for Taurasi. Holding Taurasi to less than MVP-level performances has been a key to the Fever success in this series.
 | Photo Caption: The Fever’s Tamika Catchings continued to struggle from the field, putting up 14 points but on woeful, three-of-12 field-goal shooting. But she found many other ways in which to contribute to her team. |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
Diana Taurasi turned in a solid performance of 18 points, plus seven boards, but has also continued to struggle from the field in the face of Catchings’ relentless man defense. For the night, Taurasi was six-of-16 (37.5 percent), better than Catchings, but substandard for the league’s highest regular-season scorer. Taurasi’s perimeter shot seemed to totally desert her, as she went just one-of-eight from beyond the arc.
“Sometimes you can go up and shoot it the same way, and it sometimes just doesn’t go in. I don’t know personally how may wide-open shots I got, and you just can’t knock them down, and that’s something you have to do, especially at this stage of the series,” Taurasi conceded. “If you don’t knock down those open shots, they come down, and Ebony [Hoffman] does hit it, and the game’s over. I had a couple [of open opportunities], Cap had a couple. We just got to knock them down.”
| Photo Caption: The Mercury’s Diana Taurasi (3) also struggled from the field, going six-for-16 and just one-for-eight from downtown where she is ordinarily one of the league’s greatest threats. But then again, the Fever defense has not exactly made things easy for her. |  |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
Advantage: Give the edge to the Fever, thanks to Catchings’s overall game. As pointed out prior to the series, Catchings had more pressure on her to come through, and in winning the match-up of the top two MVP vote-getters, she has helped give her team a chance to close out the series on their home floor on Wednesday night.
Shooting Guard: Indiana’s Katie Douglas turned in a respectable outing with 15 points (6/16 from the field), including three treys (3/8 from beyond the arc), plus six rebounds and seven assists.
 | Photo Caption: Katie Douglas contributed 15 points, plus six boards, seven assists, a block and a steal to the Fever’s bottom line. |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
Phoenix’s Cappie Pondexter was the best Mercury player on the court scoring 23 points (11/22 from the field); Pondexter also handed out eight assists and pulled in five boards.
 | Photo Caption: Cappie Pondexter scored a game-high 23 points, dished out eight assists, hauled down five boards, and swiped two steals. But good judgment seemed to abandon her in the game’s final minutes, as she tried to do it all herself, and was shut down time after time. Who made the bigger contribution? Reasonable minds can, and have, differed on this one. |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
Advantage: You have a split of opinion from your two analysts on this one. Bob Corwin would give what he believes to be an obvious edge here to the Mercury, as he believes Pondexter’s performance in Game Three showed why many supported her over Taurasi as the Mercury’s best player for the first half of the year.
Lee Michaelson would call it even, or even give a slight edge to the Fever. Pondexter is a remarkable player and a genuinely nice person, and at times her shot is a pure delight to watch. But despite her contributions elsewhere throughout the game, Pondexter once again showed poor judgment down the stretch, apparently forgetting that she has more than a few teammates who are capable of putting the ball in the hole. In the final three minutes, with her team down by a point, Pondexter took four of the Mercury’s eight shots. She missed every one of them, including a one-foot and a two-foot lay-up, as well as two short-to-mid-range jumpers,while her teammates, Willingham, Taylor, Taurasi and Smith combined to go two-of-four. Pondexter’s zero-percent field-goal shooting during these critical minutes, combined with her penchant to opt for the circus shot when it wasn’t really necessary, cost her team the game. Conversely, Katie Douglas quietly went about her business, making sound decisions with the basketball, netting two of her three shots in the final period and, remembering that she had teammates, kicking the ball out when the shot wasn’t there. Add to that, Douglas’s three triples over the course of the game (as many as the Mercury team combined) were critical in forcing the Mercury to defend the perimeter and opened up the paint for the Fever.
Point Guard: Neither starting point guard played a major role in this game as Indiana’s Tully Bevilaqua gave way to Briann January and Phoenix Coach Cory Gaines choose to play his power line-up with Pondexter at point and Penny Taylor sliding in at small forward, limiting minutes for starter Temeka Johnson.
Advantage: Call this about even by default.
Bench: Along with the small forward match-up, here is where the series has turned, with Indiana winning the night’s bench scoring 25-to-18. Briann January, who credits her teammates with giving her “a ton of confidence right now,” tied her career-high with 17 points on 5/8 from the field including three treys, and almost single-handedly turned the game when she exploded for 10 consecutive points in the final minute-sixteen of the third period.
 | “Bri has been amazing,” raved teammate Tamika Catchings after the game. “We talked about how much she’s grown from the beginning of the season, going through the regular season into the playoffs, we talked about how unbelievable she was in the Washington series and the things she did in the Detroit series, and now, we’re here in the Phoenix series and she is doing even more than she did before. And for us, it’s definitely grat to see her—she’s a rookie but she definitely doesn’t play like a rookie and it’s exciting for us to see that!” |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
Tamecka Dixon gave the Fever a lift at a time they were threatening to implode, with four second-quarter points. Jessica Moore also provided four points and critical defense. She, not Sutton-Brown, was on the court to help make the last stop of the game.
Penny Taylor had a quiet night with just 10 points on four-of-seven shooting from the field and was held scoreless from beyond the arc. Perhaps she was bothered by the mouth guard she was required to use as protection after to her injury in Game Two, though both before the game, Taylor described herself as “100 percent,” as did teammate Diana Taurasi afterward. “It feels good,” said Taylor, one tough cookie, who has been known to play through significant pain, as she did in finishing the Beijing Olympics on a freshly sprained ankle. “It’s a tooth and I don’t use it much when I play,” added Taylor. “The last day, it’s just settled right down. I’ve had great medical care and my dentist fixed it all up 100 percent.”
 | Photo Caption: The bench was presumed to be a big advantage for the Mercury, and in Game One, it was. Since then, however, things have shifted in the Fever’s direction. Penny Taylor, said she was 100 percent after her mouth injury in Game Two, but was held to just 10 points and was scoreless from beyond the arc. She still consumed a good deal of attention from the Fever defense, however. |
DeWanna Bonner, the league’s “Sixth Woman” in this her rookie year, made a case for why January should have gotten more props in that category. Bonner had her second consecutive disappointing outing, scoring just two points in eight minutes of action. Nicole Ohlde was the Mercury’s surprise contributor off the bench. Ohlde scored six points, on three-of-four from the field, in just under 10 minutes of play.
Advantage: For the second game in a row, give the edge to the Fever.
Offense: For the game, Phoenix shot the ball a little better at 45.6 percent (36/79) to Indiana’s 43.5 percent (30/69). However, the Mercury ailed from beyond the arc, where they were held to a season-low of just 17.6 percent (3/17), while the Fever shot a toasty 47.6 percent (10/21) from deep. Phoenix is now 3-14 in 2009 when scoring under 90 points, with three of those sub-90 losses (one in the regular season and two in this WNBA Finals series) coming at the hands of Indiana.
The two teams were roughly even in fast-break points, with the Fever holding a slim, seven-to-six advantage in that department. Of concern to Lin Dunn (and worth noting by Corey Gaines as he drafts his strategies for Game Four have got to be the Mercury’s 52-28 edge on points in the paint, and the fact that Phoenix has recaptured its lead, 21-13, in second-chance points.
Advantage: Call this about as even as the game proved to be.
Defense: It appears the Mercury are allowing the Fever to shoot better than they normally do, while Indiana is slowing Phoenix down in spots. The lack of a Phoenix interior defense in the series to date has allowed Sutton-Brown and Hoffman, in particular, to become more effective scorers, thus enabling the sometimes anemic Fever offense to score more points and stay with the high-flying Mercury. This was highlighted by the last two minutes of the game. Indiana also blocked a franchise-record nine shots in Game Three.
Advantage: Slight edge to the Fever, in spite of slightly losing the rebounding battle, 31-36 (and 9-11 on the offensive boards), in Game Three.
Coaching: Corey Gaines used the “rover” defense to keep the Mercury off-balance for sizable chunks of the game. To his credit, he went with his best players down the stretch. Lin Dunn rode the hot hand of January in the second half and smartly got Sutton-Brown, capable of a dumb foul, off the court for the last possession.
Advantage: Call this one about even as was expected before the series.
Intangibles: A big home crowd, the fifth largest in WNBA Finals history, provided the Fever with just enough energy to edge this one out. Tennessee Lady Vols Coach Pat Summitt, Indiana Pacers President and Celtics great Larry Bird, and Pacers players Danny Granger, Roy Hibbert, Dahntay Jones, T.J. Ford and A.J. Price were all in attendance.
Katie Douglas spoke afterward about what a shot in the arm the home crowd had given them:
“First, I want to talk about the crowd. They were phenomenal. I think Conseco Fieldhouse has been longing for this energy and this excitement in the building, so to be a part of it is very, very special. Again, for myself, everybody knows by now that I’m from here. To be a part of this team and hear the fans and the support that we are gaining from this community, the intensity and the atmosphere was phenomenal, nothing short. Probably the biggest stage thus far that I’ve played in, and I think Wednesday is going to be even better and bigger. So I credit Indianapolis and the fans for being our sixth man and really being there to support us.”
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| Photo Caption: A group of Hoosiers spell out “Fever” in balloons. The sell-out crowd of 18,165 gave their Indiana gals a huge shot in the arm, especially in the final minutes of the close game. |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
Lin Dunn (who had also gone out of her way to praise the Phoenix crowd after both games there, and encouraged them to come back after the first game for the good of women’s basketball) concurred:
“I thought the last three minutes of the game, when the game was on the line and everybody was standing and screaming, it was awesome! It was wonderful! It gave our players a little extra boost of energy down the stretch. So I want to say, ‘Thank you,’ to the fans and I would like to see them all back Wednesday night for the championship game.”
Curiously, Phoenix Coach Corey Gaines, who was taciturn throughout the post-game press conference, at one and the same time minimized the significance of the Indiana crowd and talked about the urgency of getting “just one game,” so he and his team could get back home to Phoenix. Asked about the affect of the roaring crowd on the visitors, Gaines replied, “They’ve been playing with that their whole life, shouldn’t affect them at all. It’s just a crowd. I’m pretty sure they’ve played before bigger crowds before. They played in the Olympics, the WNBA Championships. They’ve played in college championships, so it shouldn’t affect them at all.”
Advantage: To here, edge to the Fever in maintaining the home court advantage they seized by their Game-Two victory in Phoenix.
 | Photo Caption: Former WNBA MVP Yolanda Griffith had to watch the game from a courtside seat behind the towel girl, near, but not on, the Fever bench. One can only wonder what the game might have been like had Griffith, who announced her retirement after suffering a season-ending Achilles’ tendon tear in a Fever game on June 9, been able to play. |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
Looking ahead: These teams, though very different in philosophy, have proven themselves to be even more closely matched than their league-leading regular-season records would have led one to believe. None of the Finals games has been a blow-out by any stretch of the imagination. Though Full Court predicted a Phoenix win in a tough, five-game series, prevailing media opinion prior to the series seemed to be that it would be the Fever, not the Mercury, who would fall in four. Though the series lead is still a slim one-game edge, momentum has for now clearly shifted to Indiana in this series. The Fever have now won 12 of their last 17 games against Phoenix and have also won seven of their last nine home games. More telling still, much of the sauciness was missing from the Mercury players’ demeanor in the wake of their second consecutive Finals series loss. Phoenix had lost two games in a row only twice in the regular season—and one of those instances included a meaningless loss to Los Angeles in the final game of the season, when Gaines sat out Taurasi for the entire contest to rest her for the impending playoffs. That fact can cut two ways: Yes, the Fever have proved themselves to be more than a worthy competitor. But at the same time, the Mercury are a team unaccustomed to losing, and certainly to losing more than once in succession to the same team, and they have a season’s worth of pride now on the line. Phoenix has now lost each of its Game Threes in WNBA Finals franchise history, losing their to the Houston Comets in 1998 when the series consisted of just three games, but bouncing back to defeat the Detroit Shock, 3-2, in 2007 when the format had shifted to best-of-five. But though momentum may have shifted, there is no reason for Phoenix fans to despair. In fact, the last time a team led 2-1 after Game Three of a Finals series and went on to win the WNBA Championship was in 2005, the first year that the series had gone to best-of-five, when Sacramento beat Connecticut for the title, 3-1. Phoenix knows what it needs to do to win in Wednesday night’s “do-or-die” match-up. As Le’coe Willingham put it, “We can’t cry about this game now. Everything we put out here tonight. We need a better start. We can’t have those mental breakdowns.” Diana Taurasi took a lot of the responsibility on herself. “For one,” she stated, “we have to come out and play at a level that we haven’t played at so far in these Finals and we know we can. That’s what got us here. I think we have to do some things on both ends of the basketball court to give us more opportunities, easier opportunities, and that stems from getting stops, getting the rebound, and getting back to the way we play a little bit. If We do that, I think we’ll be okay.” For Phoenix Coach Gaines, part of the formula will be taking it hard to the hole, and getting his team to the free-throw line: “Did not finish the [third] quarter [of Game Three] strong, went to the hole, didn’t go hard enough. Got to get to that free-throw line. Twelve times is not enough. Can’t make free throws if I’m not on the free-throw line.” He also knows his team has to make more open shots. “If we have open shots, we’ve got to make them, and it’s my job to get them open even more to take those shots. So I take responsibility for that. I’ll have them in a better position to get more open shots.” After the loss, Gaines said he stood there, silently, for nearly three minutes. Then he told his team, “‘It’s one game, and I need to get back home. We need to get back home.’ And I said, ‘In order for us to get back home we need to win one game.’ I said, ‘You get us back home, that’s all we need. Get us back home. You get that one game for me, for us, we will be all right. Get me that one game. Get us that one game. We’ll be fine.’” For their part, the Fever know the history of Game Three winners that have become Finals series losers and are taking nothing for granted. “I think the biggest thing is staying focused,” said Douglas. “We have to come out—tomorrow, we’re not going to have a day off, we’re going to come in and start looking at Wednesday, and everybody has to stayed focused and we have to stay hungry. That’s the biggest thing. I think a lot of teams get content, especially when you go up 2-1. They get a little down, but we have to stay on our toes and keep them on their heels.” “Diana and Cappie had great games,” Douglas continued, “and next game we have to do a better job of using team defense, using Tammy Sutton-Brown. Jessica Davenport was the X-factor the last game in Phoenix, so we have to get her back in there, and I think that will be the biggest difference. ... I think that at times, we could have done a better job concentrating, communicating, and really playing Fever basketball. We had a lot of breakdowns, so we will get back to the grind tomorrow, no day off, there is no time for that. And just, you know, be ready and be prepared.” The health of Ebony Hoffman (dislocated shooting shoulder) could be a critical Game-Four factor; to the extent Penny Taylor’s mouth injury still bothered her in Game Three, it should be less of a factor with the extended break before Wednesday’s Game Four. Two things are for sure: For one, both teams plan to rely on the same strategies that brought them to this point in the season—for the Mercury, fast-paced, hard-hitting offense, and for the Fever, relentless, tough-nosed defense. For the other, this should be a game you will not want to miss. In the words of Cappie Pondexter: “We’re going to go out fighting. We’re not going to lay down easy in Game Four, for sure.”
Photo Caption: The Mercury won’t go out without a fight, promised Cappie Pondexter in the wake of their Game Three loss. Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson
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