Carla Leite broke the game’s final tie on a jumper with 2:26 remaining and the Golden State Valkyries became the first WNBA expansion team ever to clinch a playoff spot in its first season with an 84-80 win over the Dallas Wings on Thursday in San Francisco.
A fifth consecutive win pushed the sixth-place Valkyries (23-18) to a three-game lead on the ninth-place Los Angeles Sparks with just three games remaining in the regular season, but Golden State holds the head-to-head tiebreaker. The top eight teams reach the postseason.
Dallas (9-33), the league’s losingest team, held the upper hand on Golden State most of the way, leading by as many as 13 points.
But Golden State, down 62-58 entering the final period, scored the first five points of the last quarter, taking the lead on a Janelle Salaun 3-pointer and setting up a tight finish.
Paige Bueckers, the game’s leading scorer with 27 points, converted a three-point play with 3:34 remaining to give Dallas its last lead at 74-72.
Salaun countered immediately with a pair of free throws, creating the fourth and final tie of the last 10 minutes, before Leite drilled her clutch 21-footer from straight-away that gave the Valkyries the lead for good.
Veronica Burton delivered a three-point play with 22.3 seconds left to put Golden State up by five.
The Wings didn’t go quietly. Hoops by Bueckers twice got the visitors within two in the final 12.1 seconds, but Burton countered each with a pair of free throws, keeping Dallas at arm’s length.
Salaun paced five Golden State players in double figures with 19 points, hitting six of her 10 shots. Leite and Burton finished with 15 apiece, while Monique Billings added 11 and Iliana Rupert had 10.
Billings and Rupert also blocked three shots apiece.
Salaun had nearly half her points from beyond the 3-point arc, going 3-for-4, helping the Valkyries outscore the visitors 21-15 from deep despite taking five fewer attempts.
Bueckers, who had only six points in the first half as the Wings took a 41-32 lead into the break, shot 11-for-20 and also found time for six assists.
Myisha Hines-Allen contributed 12 points and 11 assists for the Wings, while Haley Jones logged 18 points to go with a game-high seven assists and Maddy Siegrist had 16 points.
The loss was Dallas’ ninth in a row.
–Field Level Media
