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MINNEAPOLIS — Satou Sabally scored 11 of her 24 points in the fourth quarter and Alyssa Thomas had 19 points and 13 assists to help the Phoenix Mercury erase a 20-point deficit and beat the Minnesota Lynx 89-83 in overtime on Tuesday night, tying the WNBA semifinal series at one game apiece.
“We’re confident in us, and we’ve been battling all season long,” said Sabally, who was 5 of 11 on 3-pointers. “You can’t give up a basketball game if you’re down.”
Sami Whitcomb’s 3 from the wing with 4 seconds left in regulation evened the game at 79 after Thomas kept alive the possession following Whitcomb’s airballed 3 from the top of the key.
“And they still trust me to make that shot,” said Whitcomb, who had 13 points.
Napheesa Collier’s jumper for the win on the other end fell short at the horn to force overtime.
“They ripped the game from us,” said Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve, lamenting her team’s uncharacteristic lack of composure down the stretch that included four unforced turnovers in a 65-second span of the third quarter.
The 20-point comeback by the Mercury was the third-largest in the history of the WNBA playoffs and the franchise’s first postseason win at Minnesota after 10 consecutive losses.
Thomas, who had a triple-double in the decisive Game 3 victory in the first round that ousted defending champion New York, ignited the rally with her intensity after a lackluster first half. Her three-point play with 3:32 left in the fourth quarter ended a stretch of 33:28 during which the top-seeded Lynx had the lead.
“A lot of teams would’ve packed it in,” Phoenix coach Nate Tibbetts said.
The Mercury, who played their fourth game in seven days, will host Game 3 of the best-of-five series on Friday night.
Collier scored 24 points on her 29th birthday, Kayla McBride had 21 points and Courtney Williams added 20 points and nine assists for the Lynx, whose bench was outscored 25-3 in their first loss of these playoffs.
After they took a 48-32 deficit into a halftime harangue from Tibbetts, the Mercury emerged with more of an edge. They used a 12-0 run midway through the third quarter to quickly extinguish the Lynx’s 20-point lead and whittled it away to a two-possession game by midway through the fourth quarter.
“You have to play like that to get back in the game, and that’s exactly what they did,” said Collier, who went 2 for 8 from 3-point range and made only three shots after halftime.
The Lynx went back up by five after the three-point play by Thomas and still held that lead with under a minute left in regulation, but a costly 5-second call during an inbound play with 46 seconds left gave the Mercury the ball back and Thomas hit a floater to cut it to 77-76.
“We just could not get that way about us to win the game,” Reeve said.
