Mystics Muscle Up for a Victory

Work on the Glass Spurs Second-Half Rebound, Victory: Mystics 80, Dream 74

The Washington Mystics had scratched and clawed their way back into last night's contest against the Atlanta Dream, yet somehow, despite the rebounds they were snaring and shots they were blocking, the second-half lead they had muscled to obtain was evaporating.

Atlanta's veteran guard Betty Lennox was lethal in the fourth quarter, missing just one of her field goal attempts and scoring 14 points as she spearheaded the Dream's turnaround from down nine to within one.

But matching Lennox was Washington guard Alana Beard, who scored seven of the Mystics' final nine points, and helped them hang on for an 80-74 win at Verizon Center to improve their record to 2-2.

"It's great when you can just grit it out like we did," said forward Taj McWilliams-Franklin, who had 19 points on 7-of-12 shooting and a game-high nine rebounds. "All the wins aren't going to be pretty and at the end of the season they don't say one good win, one bad win. We'll take them all, blind, crippled, limping, ugly, beautiful. We'll take anything here."

The Mystics finally got out to the fast start they've been looking for, successful on their first five field goal attempts against the Dream, which lost each of its first three games by double figures. But it wouldn't be quite that simple for Washington, whose quick start unraveled as fast as it began.

The Mystics reverted to their cold-shooting habits, going 3 of 11 the rest of the first quarter as Atlanta (0-4) racked up 21 points to their seven. But even as their shots refused to fall, the Mystics found their defensive backbone.

The combination of Beard, McWilliams-Franklin, Coco Miller, Monique Currie and Nakia Sanford forced Atlanta into shot-clock violations on consecutive possessions in the middle of the second quarter, prompting an exclamatory howl from Beard.

After the defensive stand, "I was fired up," said Beard, who scored a team-high 25 points and added four fourth-quarter rebounds. "I just wish we could get more of those, and it's going to come. We've got to get that continuity down as a team and I think the last game we took a step, tonight we took a step and hopefully we'll get to the point where we need to be defensively."

At the half, Washington trailed by seven, 38-31, but the repeated stonewalling of Atlanta's offense gave the Mystics the momentum needed to propel themselves back into the driver seat.

Washington scored 26 points in the third quarter, compared with Atlanta's 18, to snag a one-point advantage. But what was most impressive as the Mystics continued to wrestle the ball away from anyone in a powder-blue jersey was how Washington had simply overwhelmed Atlanta on the boards, outrebounding them 41-20 by game's end, despite the efforts of the Dream's much taller forward-center tandem of 6-foot-5 Erika DeSouza and 6-8 Katie Feenstra.

"Those were some big kids we outrebounded," McWilliams-Franklin said. "That's something we take a lot of pride in as a team. We want to be able to get at least 40 rebounds per game, and if we can't get 40 we want to at least outrebound a team, which we didn't do against Houston and the coaching staff let us know it."

Even as the Dream surged back, led by Lennox, who tallied 29 points, including six three-pointers, the Mystics kept scooping up rebounds to all but extinguish any second-chance opportunities for Atlanta. Six Mystics finished with four or more rebounds, including starting forward Currie, who despite being called for her fourth foul late in the first half, put in her best performance to date with 14 points and five rebounds.

Amber Jacobs also stepped up in her regular season debut as starting point guard, putting in 18 reliable minutes with just one turnover and three assists. The Mystics had 16 turnovers against the Dream, which scored 20 points off the miscues. That's a trend they don't want to duplicate when they face a much stiffer test in the final contest of a three-game homestand when they host the undefeated Los Angeles Sparks on Saturday.