Okay, hopefully I didn’t jinx it. But I KNOW that’s what you’re all thinking.

Taking on the Lynx at home, the Mercury will need another team effort to pull out a win.

One thing the Lynx do well is play hard; and for the entire game. In their last game in Minnesota, the big ‘3′ (would be 4 if Augustus wasn’t injured) stepped up in a huge way.  Charde Houston, Candice Wiggins, and Nicky Anosike all propelled the Lynx to a 29-point whooping of the Merc. To be fair, the opposite happened for the Lynx in Phoenix when they received a whooping of their own on June 17th (104-80).

Mercury fans are hoping the trend of home-teams winning continues in Phoenix tonight.

As I mentioned above, they’ll need another collective effort from the entire squad. In the Mercury’s first game without captain Diana Taurasi, Phoenix had big games from Meek, Le’coe, Cappie, Ketia, DeWanna, and Tangela (aka, basically the entire team). A couple big reasons which led to the Mercury’s victory was how well they took care of the ball (only 10 turnovers) and free-throws (19-23).  I’m 99% certain that Mazz will still start in place of Taurasi, but I’d also expect DeWanna to get 20-30 minutes in this one in an attempt to combat the Lynx’s athleticism.

The Mercury will again be very limited in personnel tonight as Nicole Ohlde will be nursing her recently repaired wrist. Thus, only 8 women will suit up for Phoenix tonight. Perhaps this is the best possible time to have numbers be so limited as this is the last game before the All-Star break - which will be sorely needed for the Mercury to get some rest.

Should be a fun one; I’d expect the Mercury to come out intense and ready to battle so they can get that 13th win.

July 22nd, 2009 4:02 PM