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“Resilience” was the word of the night Tuesday for a Valkyries roster that hasn’t shown much of it on the road this season. It came in all forms as the expansion team scraped out a 77-75 win to improve to 12-13 in Atlanta, powered by a red-hot 42.3% clip from the 3-point range for their fourth road win of the season.
There was resilience to withstand the loss of leading scorer Kayla Thornton to a season-ending injury. Resilience to rebound from the team's worst performance of the season (with 23 turnovers), which resulted in a 31-point loss Sunday to the league’s last-place team. And resilience to outlast an Atlanta squad that refused to fold and came surging back in the fourth quarter.
It was Cecilia Zandalasini who stepped up in the biggest way for Golden State. With less than 20 seconds to play and the game tied at 75, coach Natalie Nakase looked to the Italian forward and told her “go get a bucket.” Zandalasini, who notched a team-high 18 points off the bench and took a starring role in the Valkyries’ highlight reel for the night, did just that. She knocked in a go-ahead baseline jumper over the Dream’s Alyssa Gray with 3.2 seconds remaining.
“Everyone just executed, and I was able to get space and hit a shot,” Zandalasini said. “We controlled the game even though they tried to come back. This is a big step forward for us.”
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The two-point win wasn’t just the Valkyries’ first road victory since they beat the Indiana Fever on July 9 — it was a particularly timely victory for a team proving it can hold its ground in a heated playoff race.
“It’s huge. Two days ago we had one of the worst games of our season,” Zandalasini said. “It was very important for us mentally to bounce back.”
After a 39-39 tie split the teams at halftime, the Valkyries erupted for a 30-point third quarter, and did so in their signature way.
Nakase has made it clear all season long that she doesn’t care much about Golden State’s low 3-point percentage, which ranks second to last in the WNBA. She just wants her team to keep shooting. And in the third frame Tuesday, it was apparent why: The Valkyries connected on seven 3-point attempts (they went 11 of 26 for the game) and ran out to a 69-56 lead ahead of the final 10 minutes.
Momentum swung in Atlanta’s favor in the fourth as Jordin Canada orchestrated a 19-6 burst for the Dream before the teams stood at a tense 75-all standstill through delays sparked by a fan throwing an object onto the court. Veteran guard Tiffany Hayes chalked up defensive lapses to an uncharacteristic string of miscommunication.
“We always say it’s our defense that is going to do it for us, and when it’s not that, everything starts to get a little stagnant and a little off,” Hayes said. “Once we started to get stops again, it started to go our way.”
Zandalasini emerged as the clear standout in Golden State’s frontcourt, taking a load of the scoring void left by Thornton and stepping up as French rookie Janelle Salaün found herself in early foul trouble.
But it wasn’t only Zandalasini providing valuable scoring — the Valkyries’ backcourt delivered one of its most balanced performances of the season. Veronica Burton knocked down 2 of 3 from deep and finished with 10 points. Hayes added three triples in her 15-point outing, while Carla Leite found her rhythm attacking both off the dribble and from the perimeter for a 12-point night.
“We flipped the page, we moved onto the next, and this just shows that when we are connected, we do have energy,” Nakase said of her team’s 47.6% shooting performance in the win. “We kept believing, it was a great team win, and then obviously Cici took that shot.”
But for Nakase, who didn’t hide her frustrations after the game, the team’s perseverance came in the face of questionable officiating.
“We showed our resiliency … 21 fouls on us, compared to 11 fouls on them. I think that’s a big gap. Then, in terms of free throws, it’s 21 for them and eight for us,” Nakase said. “Credit to our girls for staying resilient through all that discrepancy. … It’s just all these things, these obstacles, and we just stuck together.”
It is not the first time Nakase has aired her frustrations about uneven calls. The first-year head coach was vocal about her irritation with officiating through the Valkyries’ road stretch prior to the All-Star break and again after losing to Phoenix on a last-second foul call a few weeks back.
The win marked a meaningful step forward after the Valkyries' unexpected clunker Sunday afternoon, as they remain right on the cusp of playoff contention, but the road ahead is demanding. A game Thursday in Washington, D.C., followed by a quick turnaround Friday in Chicago makes the end of the week one of the toughest segments of travel this season for Golden State.