ARLINGTON, TX — The Dallas Wings (1-2) collapsed in crunch time on Thursday, giving up paint bucket after paint bucket to the Minnesota Lynx (2-1), who escaped with a 90-86 win at College Park Center.
The Lynx duo of Natasha Howard (26 points) and Courtney Williams (21 points) combined to shoot 20-of-24 from the field in the win. Paige Bueckers led Dallas with 26 points and eight assists in the loss, but the Wings gave up five easy hoops at the rim in the game’s final three minutes as Minnesota outscored
Dallas 11-3 in the game’s final 3:26.
Bueckers provided all the offense early on for the Wings, scoring seven points in the game’s first four minutes, including a 28-foot 3-pointer that forced Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve into a timeout with 5:52 left in the first quarter. The play before, Bueckers whipped a nifty pass around a double-team to find Jessica Shepard open under the basket for an easy hoop. Dallas led 11-6 at the first timeout.
Azzi Fudd checked into the game with 4:15 left to play and immediately drew the defensive assignment against the second overall pick from last month’s WNBA Draft, Olivia Miles out of TCU. Miles drove past Fudd for her third bucket of the game at the rim with 3:30 left in the first to bring the Lynx to within 15-12, but the Wings rattled off nine of the game’s next 11 points to take a 24-14 lead on Maddy Siegrist’s second bucket of the run late in the first.
Siegrist was instant offense off the bench against the Lynx, extending Dallas’ lead to 10 once again on back-to-back pull-up jumpers on the Wings’ final two possessions of the frame, giving her 10 points in her first four minutes on the floor. Dallas took a 28-18 lead into the second quarter.
Bueckers’ passing and her stronger year-two frame end helped the Wings hang onto that lead early in the second. She found Arike Ogunbowale with a no-look pass along the baseline on a broken play to make it 34-23 with seven minutes left before the break. She bowed up to the bigger Howard on the defensive end two possessions later and held her ground nicely, poking the ball away toward the sideline, causing Howard to launch it into the backcourt for the Lynx’s seventh turnover of the first half.
But from there, Minnesota went on a 9-0 run fueled by Nia Coffey, before Fudd stopped the bleeding with her second basket of the game, giving the Wings a 36-32 lead with 4:10 left in the second. Bueckers found Ogunbowale for her fourth assist of the game a minute later, for Ogunbowale’s first 3-pointer of the game. Then, Beuckers took a charge from Coffey, who came barreling toward the rim in transition but didn’t have any teammates filling the running lanes. She may not have scored in the second, but she made the right play — the smart play — every time down the floor.
Bueckers’ seventh assist of the first half was immaculate. She found Siegrist with a no-look dime under the basket with just enough space to connect on the hoop and the harm through Williams to give the Wings a 44-36 advantage with just over a minute left in the half. Fudd got past Miles the next time down and pulled up for her third bucket of the half to make it 46-39.
Siegrist finished off her best half of basketball in a Wings uniform with two more free throws to lead the team with 17 points on 7-of-10 shooting and four rebounds as Dallas led 48-40 at halftime. The Wings looked more like the team that beat the Indiana Fever 107-104 in the team’s 2026 opener than the team that only mustered 72 points in Tuesday’s loss to the Atlanta Dream in the first half against Minnesota.
Bueckers scored six quick points early in the third, on a 3-pointer late in the shot clock, followed by a tough three-point play through Howard just 2:10 into the half to protect that eight-point lead. That’s when the turnover bug bit Dallas. The Wings turned the ball over three times in the next minute and a half to help the Lynx inch back to within 54-53 midway through the third.
Fudd made a couple of big plays in response. She deflected the ball from Kayla McBride, leading to a fast break where Fudd sped past her defender and scored on a nice find from Alanna Smith, giving the Wings a 58-55 advantage. Then she forced Miles into a miss on a driving attempt on defense. Miles got to the bucket almost at will throughout the first half, but Fudd anticipated the drive and beat Miles to the spot after Miles beat her off the dribble earlier in the game.
The one player the Wings never had an answer for was the wily point guard Williams. Her pull-up jumper was stuck on automatic. She nailed her second and third 3-pointers of the game late in the third, to cut the Dallas lead to one, then to pull the Lynx in front, 68-66, with just over a minute left in the frame. But Wings’ point guard Odyssey Sims nailed a runner at the third-quarter buzzer off a side out-of-bounds play to pull Dallas back in front, 70-68.
Bueckers gave the Wings another lift when she came back into the game for the stretch run. She nailed a pull-up jumper with 6:34 left to play, before canning her third 3-ball of the game the next time down to keep Dallas ahead, 79-74. You got the feeling if she could get to 30, there would be little the Lynx could do to complete their comeback attempt.
The Lynx were intentional about double-teaming Bueckers every time she touched the ball from there on out, though. She split the double-team and found Shepard alone under the basket for her eighth assist of the game with 4:45 left to play to make it 81-78.
But the Wings’ interior defense let them down late in the game. Howard found wide open lanes on two consecutive possessions against Smith and Shepard, scoring twice but failing to convert one of those into a three-point play and tying the game, 83-83, with just under two minutes remaining.
Sims beat the shot clock with a tough bucket on the perimeter to put the Wings back in front in response, but once again, on the other end, Miles found the lane completely uncontested on her way to her 14th and 15th points of the game, tying it again at 85-85 with 1:18 to play.
After Sims missed a bunny in the lane near the end of the shot clock, Miles and Howard ran the pick-and-roll to perfection once again, giving Howard yet another uncontested bucket in the lane to put Minnesota up 87-85 with 51 seconds left in the game. The Wings couldn’t get a shot up on the other end and turned the ball over on a shot clock violation with 27 seconds on the clock.
And that, as they say, was church. Miles finished the game with 15 points for the Lynx, while Fudd helped Dallas off the bench with eight in the loss. The Lynx were playing without Napheesa Collier, who had surgery this offseason after suffering an ankle injury in the playoffs.
