Three WNBA teams have turned around an 0-1 deficit in a three-game series into a win since the league moved back to that format in the opening round of the playoffs in 2022. Can the Wings become the fourth to complete the comeback with back-to-back wins against the two-seed Golden State Valkyries?
The Wings travel to San Francisco one more time on Friday for a decisive Game 3. Tipoff from Chase Center is scheduled for 8 p.m.
And the Wings may just have the template for what would be the second shocker
of these 2026 WNBA Playoffs, after the eight-seed New York Liberty swept the one-seed Minnesota Lynx earlier this week.
How repeatable is the Wings’ 108-100 overtime win over the Valkyries from Wednesday? Well, that’s ultimately up for debate. It took a WNBA record 45-point barrage from Arike Ogunbowale and a 21-point explosion from 39-year-old locker-room Vibes General Alysha Clark, on a night when Paige Bueckers was stonewalled by the league’s best defense, to get it done.
But some of the magic Dallas found in Game 2 at College Park Center, can be bottled up. And maybe, just maybe, it can be repackaged into an upset that travels.
One-two-three punch
The Wings need big nights from two scorers to complete the three-game comeback at the Valkyries, and that’s a baseline requirement. Now, throughout the course of the 2026 season, Wings fans have come to rely on those two scorers alternating between either Bueckers and Ogunbowale or Bueckers and Jessica Shepard.
To command two big scoring nights from any two players against the best defense in the W is asking a lot, but adding the seldom-used Clark into the mix as the Wings did in Game 2 made Wednesday’s thrilling win all the more remarkable.
“The way I prepare, the way I study doesn’t change, whether I’m playing 10 minutes, playing 30 minutes or not playing at all,” Clark said in the Wings’ post-game press conference after Game 2. “I know what I’m capable of. I know the value that I bring, and I knew that our team at some point was going to need that.”
Clark nailed her first six shot attempts of the game, including three first-half 3-pointers that helped Dallas keep pace with
With the Golden State defense concentrating all its power on stopping Bueckers, you’d think that would create opportunities for Shepard to have an impact on the game, but Shepard has not had a good series at all. After being named the WNBA’s Most Improved Player before Game 2, Shepard only got up five shot attempts in the win and turned the ball over three times.
It was Aziaha James who came through, in just the second playoff game of her young career. She made 2-of-3 from 3-point range off the bench on her way to 13 points off the bench.
“Her lock-in [in Game 2] is what impressed me the most,” Clark said of James. “Every time she touched the floor, she was locked in. Her hustle plays on the defensive boards. Diving on the floor. For her to show up the way she did was everything. I’m proud of her growth.”
James has been a breakout candidate all season long. It’s never too late in the year for James to start making that potential into reality. If she can play the third option again on Friday, it would go a long way to helping the Wings get past the Valkyries and into the WNBA semifinals.
Small victories on defense
Golden State is probably the deepest team left in the playoff field. Everyone can shoot. Everyone is long and athletic. The Valkyries are just a bad matchup factory.
The Wings have to do some of the little things they did on Wednesday on that end to give themselves a chance at the upset.
“I thought we got into gaps more,” Wings coach Jose Fernandez said. “I thought we blew up some [dribble-handoffs]. What [Clark] did to challenge Gabby [Williams] — that was crucial.”
Now, Williams scored 36 points and dished seven assists of her own for Golden State in the Game 2 loss, but there were times — crucial times, like Fernandez said, when Clark or James or Bueckers buckled down and made plays on the defensive end when the Wings needed it like a breath of fresh air.
Those small defensive wins on a night the Wings gave up 100 points are part of the special Game 2 sauce they need to be able to cook up once more in a hostile environment.
“Your job as a defender is to make their looks tough,” Clark said. “Gabby hit some tough shots [on Wednesday], but that’s who she is. Anytime you match up with those types of players, you’ve got to make their looks tough. We’ve got to make sure we don’t have any slip-ups, because when we do, they capitalize. As long as you make them work for their shots, that’s what it’s all about.”
A certain je ne sais quoi
Ogunbowale referred to it as intensity and aggressiveness. Fernandez and Clark called it a sense of urgency. It’s the level to which the team is “locked in” that made the Wings look and feel like a completely different thing altogether from Game 1 to Game 2.
These are not measurable things, but somehow, the Wings have to wrap that up and bring it with them to the West Coast on Friday. They had none of it in Game 1, and the rabid Valkyries fans ate the Wings alive as the Golden State defense engulfed Dallas on the court.
Poise “doesn’t show up in a box score or to the naked eye,” Clark said after Game 2. “But when you’re out there on the floor, it shows up in the team dynamic.”
Oh, and everyone knows this last bit, but the Wings probably
How to watch
The Wings and the Valkyries tip off from the Chase Center at 8 p.m. on Friday in the game that will decide who gets one of four spots in a five-game WNBA semifinal series and who packs it in and goes home. The game will be televised on ESPN2.
