The Las Vegas Aces will look to put their worst performance of the season in the rearview mirror when they play the host Dallas Wings on Tuesday in a matchup of the top two teams in the Western Conference.
The Aces (24-3) rolled snake eyes in a 99-61 loss at New York on Sunday. Las Vegas had an eight-game winning streak emphatically snapped by the top team in the Eastern Conference and was held to a season-low in points, made field goals and assists.
Jackie Young scored 16 points to lead the Aces, with Chelsea Gray adding 15 points and Kelsey Plum putting up 12. A’ja Wilson, Las Vegas’ superstar center, had just nine points and seven rebounds on 2-of-14 shooting.
The Aces scored just 17 points in the second half, and the 38-point margin of defeat was the organization’s largest since moving to Las Vegas from San Antonio, topping a 36-point loss to Connecticut in May 2018.
“There’s a lot of things we did wrong,” Las Vegas coach Becky Hammon said. “There’s a lot we can address, but it’s a collective thing. It wasn’t any one person for us, offensively or defensively. It was us as a group. We just didn’t do our jobs.”
The Wings (15-13) have dropped three of their past four games, including back-to-back setbacks at home to Chicago on Friday and Sunday. Most recently was a 104-96 defeat in which Arike Ogunbowale, Dallas’ leading scorer on the season and the fourth-leading scorer in the WNBA, was ejected for bumping an official in the game’s final minute.
Satou Sabally led the Wings with 25 points in the loss, while Natasha Howard scored 24, Ogunbowale added 14 points and Kalani Brown had 13. Dallas never led after allowing a 9-0 run to Chicago late in the second quarter.
The Wings have surrendered 104 points in each of their past three losses, including the most recent time they played Las Vegas (a 104-91 defeat on the road on July 30). They picked a bad time to lose their focus on defense. After playing Las Vegas on Tuesday, Dallas will battle one of the top teams in the East, the Connecticut Sun.
“We’ve got a hard stretch, don’t we?” Dallas coach Latricia Trammell said. “We’re coming off a crazy schedule of traveling plus games, and it keeps hitting us. But these players are tired, you know? Their mental health and recovery is really the most important thing, so sometimes they have to make adjustments on the fly.”
Dallas handed the Aces one of their three losses this season, garnering an 80-78 win at home on July 7.
–Field Level Media
