Sonia Citron\u2019s long-awaited Unrivaled breakout<\/a>, suggests Hive is moving in the right direction. Ezi Magbegor\u2019s recent injury absence, however, has left Monique Billings as Hive\u2019s lone big, and while Mo is giving it her all, a single 6-foot-4 player is not enough.<\/p>\nWhile Unrivaled can be unpredictable, all the stats and signs point towards a Breeze win.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t count out a Lunar Owls playoff chase<\/p>\n
Despite the loss, Lunar Owls\u2019 last game was encouraging.<\/p>\n
Not only were they right there with Phantom for the first three quarters before running out of steam in the fourth, but it\u2019s also about how Owls kept pace with Phantom. After her explosion in Philly, it would be easier for Lunar Owls to simply hope for another Marina Mabrey heater.<\/p>\n
Just feed the ball to Marina and let her fire away!<\/p>\n
Instead, Owls successfully leveraged Mabrey\u2019s shooting gravity, using the defensive attention she occupied to set up the Skylar Diggins-Temi F\u00e1gb\u00e9nl\u00e9 two-woman game, with Skylar finding Temi for wide-open, rim-running baskets. Head coach DJ Sackmann also had Mabrey look to take advantage of smaller defenders in the post. While Mabrey still shot 12 triples, Owls were not dependent on her 3-point shooting to generate offensive opportunities.<\/p>\n
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Such strategic diversity and flexibility will be needed on Friday night, when Lunar Owls meet Laces, Unrivaled\u2019s best defensive team (8:45 p.m. ET, TNT\/truTV).<\/p>\n
It will also be interesting to see how Lunar Owls choose to deploy Aaliyah Edwards, if she returns from her hand injury. Although she has been highly productive, the starting trio of Mabrey, Diggins and F\u00e1gb\u00e9nl\u00e9 has begun to establish a nice rhythm. Possibly, Owls will look to have Edwards eat in an off-the-bench role, especially since Rachel Banham and Rebecca Allen have struggled to provide consistent scoring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coming off their best win of the season, a 25-point showpiece against defending champion Rose, talk of a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":570972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[49],"tags":[9778,248274,100254,42925,248275,1493,233750,21825,88621,21902,2471,10591,10592,10594,1494,34428,62,226089,67,132,248273,68,232],"class_list":["post-570971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-aaliyah-edwards","tag-breeze","tag-dominique-malonga","tag-ezi-magbegor","tag-hive","tag-kelsey-mitchell","tag-lunar-owls","tag-marina-mabrey","tag-monique-billings","tag-noelle-quinn","tag-paige-bueckers","tag-rachel-banham","tag-rebecca-allen","tag-rickea-jackson","tag-seattle-storm","tag-sonia-citron","tag-sports","tag-the-breeze","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-unrivaled-power-rankings","tag-us","tag-wnba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116024861232968917","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}