The No. 6 seed Minnesota Lynx opened their 2023 WNBA playoff journey on the road Wednesday night, taking on No. 3 seed Connecticut Sun in Uncasville.
One of the major separators coming into this series is the disparity in playoff experience between the two squads, both in terms of which players have taken the floor in the playoffs, and in the way that the core of this Sun squad has been together now for four playoff runs in a row. That took center stage early in Game 1.
Minnesota struggled with Connecticut’s signature aggressive, at-the-level ball screen defense, which often sends two to the ball and penalizes teams for slow decision-making, and couldn’t keep pace with a red-hot Sun 3-point attack out of the gates.