SAN FRANCISCO– The Golden State Valkyries completed their season series sweep of the Indiana Fever in a comfortable 75-63 win on the back-end of a back-to-back. With the win, the Valkyries leapfrogged the Fever and the Seattle Storm to the sixth seed in the conference.
And in a game that dragged on due to multiple technical difficulties with the shot clocks, the Valkyries stayed relatively poised throughout the game. It showed in their nine first half 3-pointers, but it also showed in how they once again shut down Indiana's star center Aliyah Boston.
Golden State held the All-Star and likely All-WNBA team selection to only four points on 2-of-7 shooting. After the game, Valkyries center Iliana Rupert, who had the task of helping slow Boston down, talked about how the team kept her in check.
“We knew obviously, [she] was a big target for their team. We really tried to be physical with her; we tried to make the night hard [for her],” Rupert explained. “Tried helping, and we did that really well, so I'm happy with how that worked. It was a team effort to stop her.”
The Valkyries essentially dared anyone not named Kelsey Mitchell and Lexie Hull to shoot the ball on the perimeter, packing the paint on Boston. Whenever Boston began her post-ups, another wing lodged themselves to form that interior wall. And when Boston tried to beat the double team, the Golden State help-defense rotated fast enough to prevent any easy baskets.
“Credit to the game plan, it was [assistant coach] Kasib Powell's game plan,” Natalie Nakase said in her post-game press conference. “We threw in some new stuff today just off the fly. It was cool that, again, the players [trusted] us.”
Slowing down Kelsey Mitchell
The other emphasis in the Valkyries' game plan was slowing down Kelsey Mitchell, who's been on a tear since Caitlin Clark went down to injury. Golden State held Mitchell to 14 points on an inefficient 4-of-14 from the field and 2-of-10 from beyond the arc.
Nakase relied on Veronica Burton's defensive prowess, having her point guard track Mitchell all over the floor while the rest of the team dealt with Boston. When Burton wasn't hounding Mitchell, it was Kaila Charles chasing her off pindowns and pushing her out of the spots where she was uncomfortable.
And when Mitchell did have the ball in her hands in the pick and roll, the Valkyries opted to hard hedge and blitz her whenever convenient. To mitigate Mitchell hitting the roll man, the Golden State applied the help-the-helper defensive principle to perfection, clogging up the obvious outlets for Mitchell.
The Valkyries' defense played with speed, tactical IQ, and communication, all of which come down to trust, according to Nakase.
“When we can be that creative and try to put in a new type of scheme, credit to Kasib [Powell] and the players following suit to trust us,” Nakase said. “That takes a lot. Like, they could say, ‘Ah, this is not going to work,” but no, they are all in.
“The trust is there between coaches and players and then the communication is there obviously when they are on the floor. It's not easy, but we communicate and trust that when we leave a player, someone else has my back. That's the beauty of our defense right now.”
Playoff outlook looks brighter for Valkyries
With the win over the Fever, the Valkyries' magic number to clinch a playoff spot fell to three games. That means any combination of Golden State wins or losses from teams directly below them, as long as they add up to three, will grant them a coveted playoff berth.
That magic number three is still elusive. The New York Liberty, for all their recent hiccups, come into Ballhalla this Tuesday looking to get back on track. Not to mention a critical tiebreaker decider versus the Storm in the second-to-last game of the season.
But getting both games from the back-to-back is nothing short of impressive, as much as it was needed. The Valkyries will look to build on that this week with three home games in six days.
