With the win, the Mist players get to take home a $600,000 prize pool.
Unrivaled’s second season is now officially in the books.
Breanna Stewart and the Mist surged ahead in the second half to overtake Kelsey Plum and the top-seeded Phantom on Wednesday night in the Unrivaled championship game in South Florida. The Mist, after falling to the Phantom twice in the regular season, picked up the 80-74 win at Sephora Arena to take the title in the second campaign of the new three-on-three league held during the WNBA’s offseason.
As a result, every player on the Mist will earn a $100,000 prize. That’s up from the $50,000 that every player on Rose BC earned for winning the title last season.
Plum went off in the first quarter. She dropped 18 of the team’s 24 points in the opening period, and went a near-perfect 7-of-8 from the field with four 3-pointers. But once she hit the bench, the Phantom shut down offensively. The Mist ended the period on a 6-0 burst to tie the game back up at the first break. While it looked like the Mist were going to take the lead into halftime after the two sides bounced back and forth throughout the second quarter, Natasha Cloud hit a 3-pointer of her own at the buzzer to tie the game up once again.
But that’s when Stewart finally took off. After drilling a hook shot and a 3-pointer early to start the third quarter, she backed down Kiki Iriafen for an and-one inside. That put the Mist up by six points right away — which marked their largest lead of the game at that point. She played a pick-and-roll perfectly and caught a pass from Veronica Burton for an easy layup right away, too, which capped her 10-0 solo run.
From there, the Mist easily hit the target score of 79 to end the game without much issue to claim the championship and the $600,000 prize pool that came with it.
Plum finished with 40 points and shot 6-of-7 from the 3-point line to lead the Phantom in the loss. Her 40 points set a record for the most scored in an Unrivaled playoff game, too. Iriafen added 13 points and 11 rebounds, and Hayes finished with 12 points.
Stewart led the Mist with 32 points and four rebounds in the win while shooting 11-of-15 from the field. Arike Ogunbowale added 19 points off the bench, and Allisha Gray finished with 12 points.
Though the second edition of the league went off without a hitch and was undoubtedly entertaining along the way, all eyes in the women's basketball world will now turn to the fight between the WNBA and the players association — who are still working to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement in time for the season that is supposed to start on May 8. With how tumultuous those negotiations have been in recent months, Wednesday night may have been the last professional women's basketball played for quite some time.
This post will be updated with more information shortly.
Category: General Sports
