Hustling Valkyries draw first blood, take 1-0 series lead over Aces
Arion Armeniakos
Host · Writer
SAN FRANCISCO – A common theme in the Las Vegas Aces’ pregame chatter was that the Golden State Valkyries are not the same team the defending champions swept in the regular season.
The No. 2 Valkyries — spurred on by a raucous Ballhalla crowd — proved that to be true, handing the No. 3 Aces a fairly comprehensive 71-60 defeat in Game 1 of a potential five-game WNBA playoff semifinal series.
Golden State indeed has grown a ton since the Aces beat them for a third time in three weeks, 92-73, on June 21 in Las Vegas. Perhaps most impressive has been the emergence of Gabby Williams on the offensive end — with the Valkyries needing someone to become their go-to weapon in order to take the next step.
Williams averaged 25 points across three games in the Valkyries’ first postseason series victory in franchise history in the first round against Dallas. She picked up where she left off against the Aces, pouring in a game-high 25 points to pace Golden State.
“The first mistake [would be] believing that beating them 3-0 in the regular season matters,” Hammon said prior to tipoff. … “We have to come out with a mindset of 0-0 and do the work.”
The Aces may have felt they owed the Valkyries more respect, but their play didn’t necessarily reflect it — as shown by Golden State’s utter dominance on the glass. The hosts outrebounded the Aces 52 to 25, with their 17 offensive boards leading to 20 second-chance points.
The 27-rebound deficit is the largest ever suffered by the Aces — beating the 24 boards the New York Liberty outhustled them by twice, once in 2023 and another earlier this year, on Aug. 9, in the famous 40-point blowout in Brooklyn when the entire big three sat out (rest).
“I thought that was one of our more atrocious games of the season,” a visibly frustrated Hammon added afterward. … “All we talked about for the last 48 hours was rebounding and blocking them out, and we did not do it.”
Despite saying there was really nothing else to talk about regarding this loss except rebounding, Hammon ended her press conference on a fiery note — one can only assume in hopes of giving her team some juice ahead of Wednesday’s rematch.
“[The] good news is we played like ass and only lost by [11]. Dissect that however you want,” she concluded.
Truthfully, neither team played particularly well. But as Chelsea Gray and Kierstan Bell both said after the fact, oftentimes these types of games boil down to who wants it more. Today, that was the Valkyries.
The hosts had three players finish with double-digit rebounds — Kayla Thornton (11), former Ace Kiah Stokes (14) — named the MVP of the game by head coach Natalie Nakase — and Williams (10), the latter completing her first double-double of the campaign.
Conversely, the Aces had nobody finish with more than seven boards (Brianna Turner). A’ja Wilson, averaging 9.4 on the year, was held to just four as Golden State threw several bodies at her on both ends of the floor.
Otherwise, both teams shot under 40 percent from the field, and the Aces had a marginally better success rate from three-point range (25 to 16.7 percent). However, the timeliness of Williams' four triples (4-7 3PT) allowed the Valkyries to maintain their palpable momentum throughout.
The Aces’ biggest lead of the game was three in the early stages. It came on the back of a red-hot start from four-time MVP Wilson.
A’ja opened the contest shooting 3-of-4, forcing Nakase into a quick timeout at the 5:15 mark of the first quarter with the Aces up 11-8.
Nakase presumably wanted to disrupt Wilson from getting into the unguardable groove she so often does, and in many ways it worked. A’ja made four of her five attempts from the field in the first frame — en route to 10 points — before going on a stretch where she made two of her next nine tries.
Wilson finished with 24 points, right around her season average, but the 38 percent efficiency (8-21 FG) is something the Valkyries would happily live with for the rest of the series.
Down the stretch, every bucket the Valkyries buried felt like a shot to the gut of a wounded boxer. The Aces wove on the ropes before eventually dropping late in the fourth quarter.
On the other edge of the sword, Gray and Jackie Young combining for 27 points on 9-for-29 shooting is a glaring weakness the Aces figure to improve upon when these two next meet.
Jewell Loyd’s left leg injury, which took her out of the game early in the third quarter and kept her from returning, is another thorn in the side of the already severely injury-stricken Aces — missing NaLyssa Smith, Stephanie Talbot, and Dana Evans in this one.
But all in all, the manner of defeat provides at least some optimism that, with the right adjustments, they can get it right and steal homecourt later this week.
“You take away even half of their second-chance points, and it’s a different ball game,” Gray said. “We still didn’t play that well on the offensive end. We missed some shots that we normally make. But we have to move their defense a little bit better offensively as well."
