The Phoenix Mercury has been one of the better teams in the WNBA when playing at home this season but on the road, it is the polar opposite.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Mercury lacking consistency on the road, proving to be costly
So far when they play at Footprint Center in the heart of Phoenix, the Mercury are 6-2 at home and have been able to get notable wins over some of the top teams in the league like the New York Liberty, Seattle Storm and Minnesota Lynx. They currently have the fourth-best home record in the WNBA.
In contrast, however, the Mercury are 2-6 on the road and have had difficulties when trying to create consistency in the opposition’s city. Flipping the home record upside down, Phoenix is the fourth-worst away team in the “W.”
The trend continued as the Mercury lost 73-60 to the Lynx on Sunday. Even though they kept one of the best teams in the league to under 80 points, Phoenix struggled to translate its defensive success to offense, going 23-for-74 (31.1%) from the field and 7-for-34 (20.6%) from three.
Trying to figure out what is causing this drastic change of performance when switching sceneries, Mercury head coach Nate Tibbetts is unsure why his team’s dominant play in Phoenix hasn’t been able to consistently translate elsewhere.
“I am not sure why we have struggled as much as we have on the road,” Tibbetts said. “Obviously we got to shoot it better, but I thought we did a really good job in the first half of sharing the basketball and we got really good looks. We went 1-for-16 from three, pretty uncharacteristic of us. They [Minnesota] are a good team, and you have to come in here and play well. We held them to 73 points, typically most nights that is going to be a winnable game for us. It was just one of those nights, we never got to a point where we felt good about ourselves.”
.@PhoenixMercury head coach Nate Tibbetts discussed the team's poor shooting performance against the Minnesota Lynx:
"It was just one of those nights, we never got to the point where we felt good about ourselves."#ValleyTogether #LynxRecognize #WNBA pic.twitter.com/jVrgEY5CWh
— Burn City Sports (@BurnCitySports) June 23, 2024
Not in the distant future, the team is fast approaching the midway point of the season as Phoenix is 16 games in already. While the congested schedule hasn’t done them any favors, the Mercury will have to continue battling adversity if they want a shot at making the playoffs come the end of the year.
Understanding that it takes time for a team to gel, Mercury forward Rebecca Allen believed there were positives to take away from the loss and knows that the group will improve going forward.
“I feel like we are still building as a group,” Allen said. “We got good shots tonight. They are going to fall for us. It’s still the early part of the season where things can always change and fall in our favor. Tonight from a positive perspective, we got some really good looks. At least we are finding the shots we want to take as a group.”
The team will return to Phoenix and have a lengthy break from now until Friday before they begin a three-game homestand when they host the Los Angeles Sparks.
Following the next slate of games in the Valley, the Mercury will have five of its next six games on the road, providing a big test that could decide where the team will be at before returning from the Olympic break in August.
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Reporter Alec Cipollini covers ASU Athletics, Phoenix Mercury and more for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on his X account, @AlecCipollini
