Episode 38 - WNBA Seeding Chaos, Records Falling, and a Report the NWSL Can't Wave Off

Caitlin: But they just smoked the fever, y’all. They smothered that ever lovin’ out of them. And I think frustrated them. I think they actually showed a blueprint. They slowed them down and played in the half part right now. Hi, I’m Caitlin.

Alex: Hi, I’m Alex.

Caitlin: And this is Raising the Game, a women’s sports podcast covering primetime performers, the business behind the athletes and leagues, and what the growth of women’s sports means for the next generation of women’s athletes.

Alex: Episode 39, and we’re coming down to the wire on

Caitlin: W. Is it 39?

Alex: Wait, 38.

Caitlin: Okay. I knew I

Alex: Was gonna get that wrong.

Caitlin: I was like, we skipped a

Alex: Whole episode. Yeah, we did. Yeah.

Caitlin: Honestly, I would have thought I was wrong. Yeah. Feel like we’re at this point where it’s just like, I don’t actually know what the right answer is anymore.

Alex: Coming down to the wire on the WNBA, we are done with the regular season on Thursday.

Caitlin: Playoffs

Alex: Start Sunday.

Caitlin: They start on Sunday. Then we’ll obviously talk more about the NWSL standings, play over the weekend, how that has shook-shaken-shook-shooketh.

Alex: Shake-ish things upeth.

Caitlin: In the playoff standings as well as I think some other more serious matters related to the league that we’ll touch on in today’s episode over usual headlines but I mean you gotta we got to do the like like subscribe subscribe follow us something really fun to show

Alex: All of that and then yeah I think your one thing to share is probably a favorite thing right

Caitlin: Yes, I have so many from last week.

Alex: Yeah, why don’t you take one and I’ll take the next one and then you take the next

Lynx Season Tickets, a Facility Tour, and Unrivaled Coming to Minneapolis

Caitlin: One. Okay, we’ll just keep going back and forth. Okay, so we are now, I guess, proud owners of Link’s season tickets.

Alex: For next year.

Caitlin: For next season. This sort of came about through, I think, us having gone to enough games and they have, For those who have been following along you will recall from early episodes us talking about our ticket rep Kate.

Alex: Kind of ignoring her.

Caitlin: We ignored her a lot. We’re sorry Kate. We were in spirit. We were with you. Yes. Monetarily we were not at the time. But they are persistent and they switch up who they have reach out to you. And Alex and I actually have different reps which is hilarious. We haven’t been able to connect ourselves to But yeah, we ended up going and touring the Lynx practice facility, Lynx and Timberwolves, and then kind of their business operations, basketball operations facility, which is right across the street from the Target Center where they play. It was really cool, really cool to kind of see a peek behind the curtain. And then talked about different pricing options and things. This is something we’ve talked about doing now for a number of years. but finally feel like we were in a position to do it and also

Alex: As part of that we got playoff tickets as well

Caitlin: We wanted tickets to the playoffs so

Alex: Yeah we’re going to be trying to go to as many of those as we can yes and

Caitlin: We’re hopeful that the links make it as few of those as possible because that would help us sleep better

Alex: Yeah and sleep

Caitlin: Better at night our team will be Then the other thing that happened last week was Unrivaled’s little country-wide tour that they’re doing, which let’s be honest, it’s really like… north of the whatever parallel and then Houston now. But they’re coming to Minneapolis and we bought tickets to that. So we’re gonna go see Unrivaled in January when they’re here

Alex: With

Caitlin: Our girls.

Alex: Yeah, and we went to a game on Friday with our

Caitlin: Girls. Oh my gosh, and we went to a game on Friday. We got

Alex: Free Olivia Miles goggles. Should have brought

Caitlin: Those on the podcast. Yeah, I was

Alex: Thinking about putting them on for the beginning here,

Caitlin: But I didn’t.

Alex: Should

Caitlin: Have done it next time.

Alex: Yeah, just a lot happening.

Caitlin: So many things. So that was really fun. We did the tour and the game with the girls. They are, I think more and more when we go to the games, they’re like getting into it and like getting hyped. They really loved getting the Olivia Miles titles. They were really into that. So well done, Lynx, fan engagement team, on pulling that together. So yeah, we’re really excited for that first playoff game coming this weekend. We’ll have an update for you in next week’s episode. Anybody who

Alex: Knows a good babysitter in our area,

Caitlin: Let

Alex: Us know, because we’re gonna need one.

Caitlin: That is right. Maybe three, maybe two or three. Yeah, we have to cycle through them. We can rotate. All right, you wanna get into headlines?

Headlines: Adam Silver on the Next WNBA Commissioner

Alex: Adam Silver indicates the new WNBA commissioner may have expanded authority saying there may come a time at some years from now when it makes sense to have even more independence.

Caitlin: Yeah, so that last little bit was an actual quote from a press conference or statement he made about this. Adam Silver, for those who maybe don’t know, is the NBA commissioner, and WNBA is owned in part by the NBA. To me, this is, interesting because I think there’s always gonna be parts of the W that are gonna be fully controlled by the NBA we’ve talked in the past about the ownership structure between the two and essentially NBA owners in a lot of case in some cases are also WNBA owners and then they are also potentially part of like the third party capital raise that happened that’s part of the ownership splits now so but we do know that we are due a new commissioner he Adam Silver shared that he they’re expected to announce the search firm that they’ll be using by the end of the month He has already heard from potential candidates and there’s been some short lists like floating around, reported by different sports journalists. and these speculative candidates, a lot of, a lot of these, honestly, are people that I would be excited about. Yeah. so you have former players like Swin Cash and Nneka Agumake. We’ve talked about Nneka. We kind of were like, Nekka, go do your thing and sail off into the sunset. She broke another record. I think she scored over 8,000 career points or something over the weekend. But Swin Cash has been retired, I should say, for a little bit. And she’s been playing an executive role for some company the name is slipping my mind right now so she’s got some of that that business leadership at acumen we also have wmba franchise executives like kia clark from the new york liberty and jess smith from the golden state valkyries you’re talking about two of the highest valued franchises in the league right there Jess Smith, having done that with that crew in just two years, so you’ve got people who clearly know the mission to grow, right? New York, we’ve talked about before, has just like an excellent way of engaging with their fan base. We’ve talked about how important we feel that is in this next commissioner. you’ve got somebody like Duke athletic director, Nina King, who’s done a phenomenal job since taking over down there. and then, Renie Anderson, who is currently the chief revenue officer and executive vice president in the NFL, which, you know, is kind of interesting, to bring that perspective over of like a gigantic league, right? And you think about how they’ve continued to grow and explode and. You know, engagement with the players, engagement with the fans, right. And then Ally, so a common sponsor of a lot of these women’s sports. Their CEO, Andrea Brimmer, is also been thrown out there as a potential candidate. So pretty interesting list. We will continue to keep track of this, and we hope that it will be someone that will be excited about.

Alex: Yeah, we’ll find out.

Caitlin: We’ll find out.

Lisa Leslie’s Statue and the Toronto Tempo Docuseries

Alex: All right, next one. Lisa Leslie now has a statue in LA.

Caitlin: Yeah, if you haven’t had a chance to see this statue, it’s really cool. It’s like a very, as lifelike as a bronze statue can get, right? A statue of her dunking a basketball, which she was the first woman to ever do that in a game back in 2002. It also has like cool quotes about different like leadership or family or team that she made around her career and she gave just this spectacular speech talking about how why she did this and we talked about her in our Pioneers episode. And she could have gone and played overseas, made a ton of money, way more money than she was making here, right? But she chose to stay. She also leaned into, how do I build my personal brand and attract fans to the W? And so she did modeling, right? Things like that. And she’s just been such a great ambassador for the game and for the league. for those who don’t know, I do want to read a little bit of her her resume here. She’s a two-time WNBA champion. She’s a three-time WNBA MVP, four-time Olympic gold medalist, eight-time WNBA All-Star. And like I said, had the first dunk in a regular season game, not a scrimmage, anything like that, on June 30th of 2002. And in 2015, she was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame. So just so credentialed, absolutely deserving from a professional perspective. And now she sits on that plaza outside of what is it called? No crypto dot com arena. But with the likes of Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, like

Alex: That’s awesome,

Caitlin: Deserving to be there with all of those players for sure. So cheers to you, Lisa.

Alex: ESPN has released a four part docu series on the launch and season start of the Toronto Tempo.

Caitlin: Yeah, it’s called setting the tempo. We actually saw it on ESPN the other night. so encourage you to check it out. I think that’s pretty cool. Talking about how that expansion team got formed. and plus I think they’ve got some, they’ve got, they got a cast of characters up there with that team.

WNBA Records: A’ja Wilson, Olivia Miles, Angel Reese, and Record Attendance

Alex: Records on records in the W over the weekend. Starting out here, A’ja Wilson becomes the first player in WNBA history to achieve multiple 1,000 point seasons.

Caitlin: Yeah. So she did this back in 2024, did it again this season, this season. She actually did it in the fastest amount of games, 39 games, just continuing to produce in a way that’s like completely out of this world relative to her peers.

Alex: Libby Miles breaks the rookie single season scoring record, setting sitting now at 790 with two games to play.

Caitlin: Yeah, so this was through 40 games. Her 40th game was over the weekend when she broke this record. The old record was set by Caitlin Clark in 2024, who had 769 points over 40 games. So, awesome to see. I mean, I don’t think that was ever really in question for Liv. It’s awesome to see the level just keep getting raised. Yeah, getting raised and

Alex: Raised, yeah. Angel Reese continues to add to the record book recording her 31st double-double over the weekend.

Caitlin: She’s just on a tear yeah, I don’t know what else you can say about what she’s doing right now, but She’s also the fastest player to record 70 double-doubles in her career. So she did that in just 93 games Yeah, so like almost what is that 70 almost 70 ish percent 70 to 75 percent of her game She’s hitting a double-double

Alex: Kelsey Mitchell continues her 20-plus point streak

Caitlin: Now at

Alex: 26 consecutive games.

Caitlin: These women are…

Alex: That’s crazy.

Caitlin: They’re out of their minds. Go watch a game, man. They’re so good. Speaking of watching games, I snuck one in here, but the league overall is on pace to by far be the most viewed season ever. We’ve talked before about like broadcast minutes viewed or viewers of games on TV. They just released this was last week kind of as we came back from the FIBA break. So there were still games to go, right? But 3.24 million fans have attended a WNBA game this year. Wow. The average attendance is up 21% over 11,000 on average coming to these games. And there have been 180 sell-outs, which is 28 more than last season. So not only are people watching on TV, primarily because you can watch on TV in more ways than you ever could last in any previous season, but people are going to games, right? We talk about Bahala, It’s just sold out. Two years straight of

Alex: Sold-outs.

Caitlin: Always. Like I just saw it yesterday. Yeah. The fire pit out in Portland expansion team, sold out, Toronto tempo, setting attendance records whether they’re playing in Toronto or Vancouver, right? It’s awesome to see and we just, we love the momentum.

NWSL, WPBL, PWHL, and Unrivaled Headlines

Alex: Yeah, it’s great. In NWSL news, Cloé Lacasse extended through 2028 by the Utah Royals.

Caitlin: Yeah, awesome for Utah. I’ll take this next one. Denver sets the single season scoring record for a first year club with 41 goals and counting. Uh,

Alex: Gotham officially clinched a playoff spot.

Caitlin: And the Chicago stars have officially been eliminated from the playoffs. We actually expect that in the coming couple of weeks, we’re going to have a little bit more of this back and forth, maybe.

Alex: Quite a few teams that are dead on paper, they just

Caitlin: Not mathematically gone yet. Not technically knocked

Alex: Out. After leaving Kansas City, former U.S. women’s national team and KC head coach turned coaching director, Latko, I always get this wrong, Andonofsky has joined the Chicago Stars front office as chief soccer officer. He just gets like new titles.

Caitlin: Yes, and when I was writing this, I was like, I wanna be a chief soccer officer. Yeah, what does

Alex: That

Caitlin: Mean? Also, you can just make up any kind of you could be the chief soccer

Alex: Officer at your job right now.

Caitlin: I totally could. I totally could. I’m going to just say that that’s my that’s my thing.

Alex: Columbus City Council voted unanimously to add a 2% fee on the MLS’s Columbus crew tickets to help fund the city’s new women’s team due to join the NWSL in twenty twenty eight.

Caitlin: I think this is an interesting way to kind of partner the men’s and women’s teams and and I get people are going to there’s going to be like Probably some level of backlash, but it’s honestly saying like So the team the crew and the new team are subsidized in some way by the city Yeah, like government right like we’ve talked about that a little bit and so in order for them to continue to kind of provide those funds I think they were able to to make that vote. I think that’s a smart move

Alex: The NWSL received eight total misconduct complaints from four clubs in six months according to a report from Defector Media.

Caitlin: We are gonna go deeper on this in our NWSL segment, so save my comments for

Alex: Then. WPBL Championship Series has gone to five games. You will know the winner by the time you hear this episode. Game five’s tomorrow night. We record on Mondays.

Caitlin: You’ll hear

Alex: This on Wednesday.

Caitlin: That’s right. It’s been a thrilling series so far. So L.A., the lower seeded team took a 2-0 series lead on San Francisco to start. San Francisco, the high seed coming into the playoffs, battled back, tied it at 2-2. Yeah. Now we got a winner take all final tomorrow night.

Alex: Amazing.

Caitlin: By the time you’re hearing this, like Alex said, you’ll know.

Alex: You’ll know. PWHL set to share a big announcement on Thursday this week. No legitimate indicators as to what it is about.

Caitlin: It could be so many things. It could be so many things. I do want at like a very kind of historic hockey venue and then you’re also going to have representation from league leadership and the players association so Laura Stacey will be there she’s the president of the pwhl pa whatever yeah yeah over there thing is so that could be a number of things the

Alex: All-star game

Caitlin: There’s obviously, I think we talked about last week that the president of Scripps Sports was like, oh, an All-Star game. And we were like, but there’s also, could it, we don’t have, it’s, the claims are that it’s monumental and historic in women’s hockey, right? So an All-Star game would be

Alex: That.

Caitlin: They’re not expanding anymore. Franchise

Alex: Instead of central ownership.

Caitlin: That was the other thing that fans are speculating is are we franchising this, especially given all of the turmoil with Mark Walter right now. So we’ll also see how that goes.

Alex: We’ll find out. Unrivaled has unveiled two more tour stops, adding Minneapolis and Houston to the map for the 20-27 season.

Caitlin: Woo, like we said, we got tickets. They did a little celebration party at our local women’s sports bar, a bar of their own over in Southeast Minneapolis. Napheesa Collier, the queen herself, showed up and poured some beers for folks, signed some basketballs and T-shirts and whatnot. That looked like a good time. It did, it did. We wish you guys were closer to us. Yeah, I think we said that last time we talked

WNBA: Should Lynx Fans Be Panicking?

Alex: About it. All right, let’s move on to WNBA.

Caitlin: Oh, man. We’re going to talk, I think, a little bit about the game we went to. We’re also going to talk. I think that’s going to expand into this, like. should we be panicking as Lynx fans type of conversation. And then we want to go through in this section, we know the playoff teams, we’ve known them for a couple of weeks now, but as we are heading into these playoffs, I think there’s two things we want to talk about. There’s a little bit of like a what’s hot and what’s cold for each team and what are the maybe the things they should be trying to take advantage of and the things that other teams could exploit. The other thing that I want to talk about is I went like total rain man today and did a whole bunch of scenarios for these last couple of games to talk about how the. the seating would shake out. And some of them are actually really interesting and make for what I think will be very unique first round playoff matchup. So we’ll just be talking about that. Guys, at lunch

Alex: Today, it was like that episode of Always Sunny where he’s like pointed all the different strings on the board. I

Caitlin: Don’t think Alex, I think he stopped listening after a little while. He’s like, what did you draw? I’m like, Dave, look at this bracket right here. It’s like bracket number eight that I’ve

Alex: Drawn.

Caitlin: It’s fine. It was fun. It was fun for me.

Alex: All right. Let’s talk about this Lynx game. I

Caitlin: Feel

Alex: Like probably a lot of our takes here are the same. Defense felt good for the most part.

Caitlin: Yeah, I think defensively created a lot of turnovers. They were very active. If you were watching the game, there was a lot of energy on defense, which I think sometimes the Lynx can get a little, when they lose, I think it’s something that Cheryl harps on them a lot, but they can get a little lazy. they were not always rotating out to the three and New York was so hot from three. And like, so their rotations felt off. Some of that happened when they had subs in two or bench players, I should say. But that is something that I think they’ve gotta be, they’ve gotta be mindful of.

Alex: Yeah, I think a lot of teams have been trying to get physical with Olivia Miles I think that frustrates her, but I do think I agree with Cheryl that she kind of grew kind of in the second half of that game and was able to kind of handle the physicality more. She was getting, she came to the line a little bit more, which was good. So I’ll talk about that more later. But I think that’s a big thing that

Caitlin: We’re gonna

Alex: Have to watch going into the playoffs.

Caitlin: Yeah, I mean, I think I think we’ve seen that as teams have learned her game more, right, as a rookie, you don’t have the benefit of that early on in the season. And I think what they’ve learned is if you can pick her up, pick her up early, right? The other thing that the Liberty did really, I think, effectively, and I think Golden State did this too when they beat us a couple weeks ago, right before the FIBA break, was they rotate defenders on her. So she’s getting tired. because it’s always her. But there’s three different players that they’re rotating through and they’re different looks. So for New York, it was Polly Nastia. She’s super quick. She is like so quick and fast and can keep up with miles like handles to be honest. And then you’d rotate on Leonie Fiebesch who is also quick, but she’s long, right? She’s a big guard, if you even call her a guard. And so she’s got length, she’s harder to see over, right? All of those things. And then I think they would rotate Rebecca Allen onto her as well. And she’s a bigger guard too. And so you’re just seeing like they’re throwing these rotations at Liv. I think we saw also, that trapping potentially is something that they’ll try to pull on her as well. And I think what you saw the adjustment to your point in the second half was inbound the ball to her, but then pass it immediately to someone else and let them take it over half and then let Liv come get it to start the offense now. Where that’s challenging is you’re taking time off the clock to get that set. And so can you get into your rhythm still, I think, is something that the links are going to have to adjust to. But to your point, I do think she kind of figured out the game a little bit more in the second half. Like you said, got herself to the free throw line. and ended up having 21 points or whatever she had in the game, 20 points. But she’s learning and she says this too. She’s like, I’m learning as I go. I’m just trying to get better every day and it’s hard, right? It’s

Alex: Hard. I think one other stat I have, and I think this might go into some of the stats that you have, they were 6 of 22

Caitlin: From

Alex: 3, 27.2% and couldn’t hit one in the fourth.

Caitlin: Yeah, I’ve got a little bit more of a breakdown on the overall field goal percentage. I mean, I think over the last three losses that the Lynx had, right? You had Golden State, Atlanta, and then New York. They’re shooting 39% from the floor and 31% from three. Their overall regular season average is 48% from the floor and 38.4% from three.

Alex: Which are both top three.

Caitlin: Which are both top three ratings. Now, if they were to have shot in relation, just to give you an idea of how bad the 39 and the 31 is, the 39 would be second worst in the league in field goal percentage, second only to the Phoenix Mercury. And the 31% would be fifth worst in the league. for a three point field goal percentage just on the overall season for teams that are ranked down there. So like my point is if they shot like that, of course they’re going to lose. Yeah. And I think it’s the degrees of difference on their averages relative to what they’re doing. It’s. This is not going to last. Yeah, like shooting slumps don’t last for an entire team this long. Yeah. I think you saw improvement in the game against the Connecticut Sun. And what was I’ve you mentioned the three pointers, but man, they were missing easy, easy layups in the game against New York. So I think all of this to say they got to they got to like kind of move on from that like there’s they look like a team coming off of a two-week break that like everybody’s kind of like off a little bit your depth perception in the arena is different like the crowd noise is getting to you or something. But, I think tomorrow’s game, which will be the day before you hear this, but I think tomorrow’s game against the Fever is going to be really telling of have they snapped out of that or not. Hopefully they do.

Alex: Yeah. We’ll see. Let’s get to talking about, do we want to go over the standings or should we

WNBA Playoff Standings Heading Into the Final Week

Caitlin: Yeah. Well, I think let’s go over the standings because then when I get back to the, my rain man situation, we can, we, we have some grounding here. So we’ve got Minnesota still in first, they’re a game ahead of Golden State in second place. And then you’ve got Las Vegas who are just like, they’re going to be the third seed basically no matter what they can’t go up from where they are. They could go down, but they won’t. You’ve got Atlanta right now in fourth on 28 wins, 14 losses. Indiana right behind them at 27 and 15. Then you have both New York, Washington, and Dallas sitting at 26 and 16. Now New York and Atlanta are playing right now.

Alex: I’m looking, I’m trying to get there.

Caitlin: Oh, okay, I thought you were saying that my was reading the thing wrong.

Alex: No,

Caitlin: No, no, no, no.

Alex: I got it up. 81 to 71, Atlanta’s winning with five minutes to go.

Caitlin: Boy. So we’re gonna get into the implications of that game in a little bit. And so I think the overall order of the teams honestly hasn’t changed too much since last week. But the really interesting thing going into this week is you have four teams each playing each other in a two game series to end the season. So there is actually a lot of movement that could happen specifically between the fourth and the eighth spot in the standings,

Alex: Which affects who the top four

Best and Worst Case Seeding for Every Playoff Team

Caitlin: Teams play. Exactly. So let’s let’s give a little breakdown of that. Like essentially, like what’s the best and the worst finish for each team? So Minnesota and Golden State are both like best, best one, worst two. They won’t. Neither one of them will move below the two. Aces like I said best three they can’t go higher than that. Worst is four. Yeah, like they’re and they’re probably getting three now Here’s where it gets really interesting Atlanta dream best case scenario they could get third Worst case scenario they could drop as far as seventh.

Alex: He is

Caitlin: New York Liberty, best case scenario, fourth. They are currently in sixth, right? Worst case scenario, eighth. Indiana Fever, currently in fifth. Best case scenario, fourth. Worst case scenario, eighth. Washington Mystics, best case scenario, fifth. Worst case scenario, eighth. Dallas Wings, best fifth, worst. eighth. That’s wild. So you have some crazy swings based on how these last two games for each of these teams go, right? So we’re going to go a little, have a little back and forth here, I think on just like these hot, hot and cold is what we call them, but just are good and bad. I guess is what we actually wrote down. why don’t you start with the links?

Team by Team: What Each Playoff Contender Does Well and Badly

Alex: Yeah, I mean, it’s nothing. I mean, we pretty much hit a lot of this Overall, this whole season, they are second in three-point percentage and third in field goal percentage. So their shooting is some of the best. They’ll need it to show up. And I think we talked earlier today is that what they need to do is if Liv is cold or if he is cold. I think something that they did earlier in the season was find who’s hot. and have them shoot the ball,

Caitlin: Right? Like

Alex: You need to cycle it around and figure out who’s not getting the attention or who’s actually hitting their shots, get it to them. And if they can do that, then they’re dangerous. 100%. The bad I called out, they can’t handle the physicality, like we said. Cheryl at one point did call it the team’s kryptonite. And so I just think playoff basketball tend to be more physical. They’re gonna have to figure it out

Caitlin: Yeah. Yeah. They’re going to have to buckle up for sure. I actually think the rotations thing, like rotation on offense. I’ve talked about defense before is really interesting. We were talking about this earlier, but like. It does appear to me that Fee and Liv are, I don’t know if I’d call it struggling, but they’re still trying to figure out how do I kind of get mine with Fee back, right? When Fee wasn’t back, it was kind of Liv’s show, and she just was able to spray the ball around everybody else, and you had K-Mack go off, you had Natasha Howard go off, you had Kourt go off. And then you had Nia giving really, really solid minutes for them, which she still does, man. Last name change or no, she’s crushing it out there. I digress. But you can kind of, you see a challenge in like, I got to get the ball to fee like you kind of see that body language from Liv and then she forces it Right or fees like I gotta get the ball to live and it she forces it and I think they have they haven’t figured quite their Flow out yet. Yeah But then you talk about like the other weapons they have just move the ball around Yeah, doesn’t matter who gets touch absolutely, right? You can all get touches. Okay. Yeah They’re too good. All right. For the Valkyries, Golden State Valkyries, from my perspective, on the good side, they are the best team on both sides of the ball. So when I say that, what I mean is as a team, right, they are very good defensively. I don’t think anybody they’re first in the league in defense. Nobody’s going to argue that. And then offensively, their offense is as strong as their team is. To be more blunt, they don’t really have. I get Gabby Williams can be great, but we don’t see the Gabby Williams of FIBA in the W very often. Yeah. And so they don’t have players who necessarily are going to take over games. They get a lot of scoring production from a lot of different players. And case in point, they have one of the best benches from an offensive perspective in the league. I mean, you’ve got Janelle Salon, who’s probably gonna win sixth player of the year this year. And so that’s what I mean when I say best team. The bad is they rely so heavily on the three point ball. If that’s not following, who picks up the slack, right? And so lacking that pure score, that person who can take over games, if your weapon, which is distributed three-point shots and then being able to get to the rim once that starts to get defended on you, I feel like that’s a weakness for them. interesting for the Valkyries just to note they did they did have the most number of season sweeps during the year of playoff teams so they swept Atlanta New York and Dallas but they got swept by Las Vegas and Minnesota so the two teams who are right at the top with them they did not perform well against Basically everybody else they were

Alex: Really good. Yeah All right, the aces I I’m gonna have to look at this cuz I had a lot of stats that I wrote down for this One the good they have a double whammy First of all most efficient offense 48.4% from the field which is second in the league 91.3 points a game which is third in the league second best assist to turnover ratio at 1.8 and Asia is well rested yeah yeah she took that fever break off you know she’s obviously the front runner MVP candidate she had time off to Most every other good player has spent time at FIBA, didn’t get the time off. And so they’re like, she’s going to be ready to roll, which that’ll be scary. The bad, another bunch of numbers here, you look at their last 10 games. They are six and four with losses to Minnesota twice and Atlanta once, also a Liberty, but I think they rested a bunch of people.

Caitlin: So that’s kind of a outlier there. That

Alex: Game. they most recently played the Storm twice and finished out with LA and Phoenix. They will not have played a playoff team in over five weeks when it comes to the playoffs. So basically you’ve lost a couple of games to your playoff teams right

Caitlin: Before the

Alex: Break and now you’re coming back

Caitlin: And you’re not playing against them. So

Alex: You could look at that as, well they’re just gonna get tuned up with these lower level, not lower level, non-playoff. But it’s also if you’re not getting challenged and like you don’t know where you’re actually at.

Caitlin: Yeah, that’s a good point. Like, are you ready to step into that arena, right, where everything is on the line and you’ve gotta kind of muscle up, right? That’s a good point. All right, I’ve got the Atlanta Dream next. So we’ve talked about this team all season long as like they are, they should be so, and they are really good when they’re playing they are capable of. We have said that the only thing stopping the Atlanta dream from being great is the Atlanta dream, right? They seem to sometimes get in their own way when they’re playing. That has not been the case the last number of games, I would say, and you’ll look here really quick. I think there are seven and eight and two in their last 10. So I hope that continues for them, honestly. I think they’re fun to watch. They’re probably still beating New York right now. We’ll check on that. But the bad or kind of the challenge for me, right, is just like the mental side, like, can they stay in games? They also come into the playoffs with the worst record against playoff teams of any other playoff team. and only two season series wins against Dallas and Indiana. So they’ve lost all their other series. Now they’re still playing the Liberty. They’ve got the two games. They look, they looked like they were gonna win that, but who knows, there was still a lot of time

Alex: Left. 88 to 80 with two and a half minutes to

Caitlin: Go. All right.

Alex: We’ll see.

Caitlin: So I think the Atlanta that we’ve been seeing, if they can continue, they are final finals to me. They also have Angel Reese, who is again, she’s playing out of her head right now. She’s just putting up really critical numbers for them, both from an offensive perspective, and obviously you’re gonna get the rebounds from her. so love to see it. We also got to see or like really got to see highlighted her defensive chops and FIBA. But like that’s that’s been there, guys. Like she can defend. She’s I don’t know when it was, but she had some crazy like double block on Brittney Griner in the game earlier this season. Like the woman knows how to get her hands on a basketball.

Alex: Yeah for sure all right moving on to the fever the good i mean clark mitchell and to a certain extent boston can basically carry the scoring for this team kelsey mitchell is averaging 24.6 a game on 50.7 shooting 44.6 from three park is 21.7 on 44.4 percent and alia boston is Clark and Mitchell had 10 games. They scored like, combined 500 and some points. They’re averaging 50 points a game together. So obviously. Like they can score, the downside here is defense. They are number one, I believe, in scoring, when they score on their offense

Caitlin: Of

Alex: Like 98 points. I

Caitlin: Can’t really exact. Their

Alex: Offensive rating is really high. They allow 90.8 points per game on average, which is 12. So worse than all of the playoff teams and then a couple more. And so yeah, I think that’s just gonna be,

Caitlin: Yeah, I have two others that I’ve just noticed in the last couple of their games. One is every time I go look at a box score, I’m kind of like, where’s Aliyah Boston? Like, it feels like offensively they’ve gone away from her a little bit, or she’s not shooting while I haven’t looked closely enough to know one way or the other, but that leads me into my second point. Mitchell and Clark both are such high volume shooters. That is how they score the points that they score. And so when you have games where you have two players who need to get 20 plus shots a night to get their 20 whatever five points, 22, 25 points, that’s 40 possessions, right? And then you think of the other possessions that you have to have. And I think 40 shots, let’s say they need 20 shots or whatever, that’s gonna be, I don’t know, not probably quite half of your possessions, but somewhere around there, right? And what I think could be really interesting for teams to look at we were talking about this like how you would use scheme for miles a little bit Is if you can force the fever to play Half court basketball. Yeah, and slow the game down. Oh, yeah, right You reduce the number of shot opportunities. Yeah, because you’re just there’s less time for those possessions to happen. Yep Also, Clark is more turnover prone in the half court set than she is on the fast break. She’s dangerous on the fast break because she can see those passing lanes. She’s incredible at it. She also loves to score in transition. If you go look at a lot of her three point shots, things like that, a lot of that scoring comes in transition. So I think if teams are are game planning there it’s like how do we get them to run their half court set Right and force them into slowing the game down.

Alex: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good point

Caitlin: All right, dallas i’ve got dallas good Early in the season, I think Minnesota had played them and you had the quote from Natasha Howard saying like, yeah, when the lane is that wide open, I love it. It’s amazing, right? Something like that. Awakawir has been providing the rim protection that that team desperately needs and she has been doing a brilliant job of it. I don’t know the exact number, but she’s got to have, she feels like she’s averaging like three blocks, at least a game right now, which is a lot of blocks in a game. Just to be clear, the bad for Dallas is the injury bug has really bitten them hard, right? And their over-reliance on Paige at point guard I think is going to be really challenging for them. Yep. they continue to run into, so AZ obviously out with the knee, so she’s not going to be playing. We saw in a game over the weekend, Odyssey Sims, who will play some backup point guard for them, went down with a knee injury. I haven’t seen anything definitive on what that was, but it did not look good. And that leaves Zia James, Zaza, as their backup point guard. So if you need to get Paige any kind of rest, you have one, maybe one option, right? And so now you have your leader who puts up a decent number of points per game on her own, but also runs your offense, right? who may not be able to get the rest. She played in FIBA, she didn’t get a break, right? She had the little knee tweak at the end of FIBA, so who knows what her health was like. And then you’ve got, you know, Lana Smith has been out with injury. I think they’ve had, and they’ve had others, right? And so I just, I worry that from a health perspective, While they’ve put together this really incredible season from a turnaround perspective for that franchise I just don’t know if they have enough gas left in the tank to really Get past that first round.

Alex: Yeah for sure The Liberty, I mean, for the good, I literally put they have Stewie. Yeah, that’s probably all you’re gonna say.

Caitlin: Skin over

Alex: Teeth, right? 24 points, 10 rebounds against Minnesota, and then she had 27 points, was it last night, Sunday? I think it was

Caitlin: Last night. Yeah, yeah, I guess the

Alex: Tempo. I’d also put that, And this is not necessarily just for them, but for the league. Like they kind of helped put a blueprint together for how to handle miles. Right. for the bad, I said, all of this being said, 19 turnovers on Friday night is not who they are. They are not that team. they have to rely on. the over reliance on Stewie, the reliance on Inescue, and she’s not shooting as well as she normally has shot in the past. And then, you know, relying on Jones to put up those numbers. I don’t think that blueprint is a blueprint for the playoffs for them. And just the reliance on so few players, I think it’s gonna be hard for them.

Caitlin: Yeah, I’m looking right now, because they’re in that game against Atlanta. They’re down by nine, it looks like, with under a minute to go. Yeah, 50 seconds to go. So, likely that Atlanta will win that one. And another double-double from Angel Reiss. All right. A lot of update. Yeah, but Stewie had 27 points again, and like. Again, like I think you said, I think the over, again, when you’re super reliant on the one and you’re not getting consistent production from others, I think that’s a challenge. All right, I will wrap us up here with the Mystics and then we’ll get into my Rain Man situation, which that game ending will be helpful. So I’ve got the Washington Mystics, the good. I love the energy, the hustle, the heart, the belief. They’re like the young guns. They call themselves something different. It’s like they don’t know any better.

Alex: Yeah, yeah.

Caitlin: And I kind of love it.

Alex: Yeah,

Caitlin: It works. I don’t want to play them in the playoffs. I really, and I don’t think Minnesota would, I don’t think that will ever work out that way where we’re at at this point, but they just smoked the fever, y’all. They smothered that, ever loving out of them. I think frustrated them. I think they actually showed a blueprint. They slowed them down and played in the half court. I think they showed a blueprint for how to not necessarily keep Kelsey Mitchell and Caitlin Clark from scoring, but limit the other possessions that can happen as a result. So the bad, the youth, once the pressure is actually on, can you hang? Once you are in those games where you have to stay composed, where you have to make the layup, you have to do all of that because otherwise you go home. I just wonder right yeah again but I don’t want to play them so the interesting thing about the Mystics they have at least one win they’re the only team where this is true at least one win over all of the bottom four excuse me of over all of the playoff teams all right then they won the series against Indiana Atlanta and Dallas

Alex: All right

WNBA Playoff Seeding Scenarios and Tiebreakers

Caitlin: Okay, so, timely. You can see this on our…

Alex: On the video, I don’t…

Caitlin: I don’t know if it’ll translate very well. Yeah,

Alex: It’s definitely not gonna translate to audio.

Caitlin: No, I know, I’m showing my crazy thing. So, what I wanted to understand, the way that this started was like, who had the tie breaks was how this worked. And the first tie break in the WNBA for seating is, record against that team that you’re tied with. The second one is your record against teams with a 500 or better record

Alex: Overall.

Caitlin: So

Alex: Go with it.

Caitlin: That was

Alex: A little recursive

Caitlin: Almost. A little bit recursive. So what’s interesting about this, just some notes. We mentioned this before, but Golden State is the only team with, so far, with three series sweeps against Atlanta, Minnesota could make it almost three because if they beat Indiana twice, they’ll have three wins on Golden State, but they had to play them an extra game in Commissioner’s Cup. So they’re actually three and one against the Belgris. you also have, so I think there’s a lot of like really interesting, kind of ways that this breaks down of like Atlanta top team, right in fourth, but they have lost, not beaten Golden State or Las Vegas and they’re one and two against Minnesota. Yeah. So we talked about that. Like they’re really good against the bottom part of the playoff teams, but not as good against the top. Yeah. Okay. So here we go. The interesting thing about the playoff seeding is that, and we alluded to this, is that in these last two games over the, until Thursday, you had, you have Minnesota play in Indiana twice, and then you have Atlanta play in New York twice. So because of those games you could have significant shake-up in like we said Yeah, kind of four through eight right for the most part Minnesota Golden State and Vegas will stay in the top three assumptions I made when I went through this one was I assumed that all of the playoff teams not playing each other were going to win their games. Okay. So I’m assuming that Golden State will get two more wins. I’m assuming Vegas will get two more wins. Yeah. I’m assuming Dallas and Washington will win their last two games. Yeah. Okay. So If Minnesota and Indiana, those two are playing each other, and New York and Atlanta split their series. So just being like, even Stevens, that would mean that New York goes and wins the game on I think Wednesday they play. And then Minnesota and Indiana split. The way that the bracket would work out is Minnesota would retain the number one

Alex: Seed.

Caitlin: Golden State will be the second seed, Vegas will be the third, Atlanta will stay in fourth. Washington will jump up to fifth, Dallas will go to sixth, Indiana will go down to seventh, and the Liberty will be in eighth. That would mean that the first round of the playoffs, Minnesota would play New York. Yep. Golden State would play Indiana. Okay. Atlanta would play Washington and Vegas would play Dallas. All right. Now, fun fact about this bracket.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: Of those four matchups, three of them, the lower seed actually owns the season series with the high seed. So New York owns the series against Minnesota, Washington owns the series against Atlanta, and Dallas actually owns the season series against Vegas. A Golden State owns it on Indiana, and I’m

Alex: Okay with that. That’s fine.

Caitlin: Okay, so that, I think that would be very, very intriguing. Okay, next scenario. Minnesota wins out, Atlanta wins out. Still possible, because Atlanta won tonight. Same bracket as above.

Alex: Okay.

Caitlin: No change.

Alex: All right.

Caitlin: Okay. Go Lynx. Why

Alex: Are you making me think that I want to lose a game as the Lynx?

Caitlin: Oh, you do. You might. Okay. Now, Indiana wins out. And then now I had New York wins out, which we now know is not possible. But if that had been the case, right? If Indiana wins out, Minnesota will fall to the two spot. Assuming Golden State wins their two games. So Golden State goes to one, Vegas third. Then Indiana jumps to fourth, right? If New York had been able to win both games, they actually would have gone to fifth. Because they own the tie break on the other teams. So you guys, let me say this. Indiana, in this scenario where Indiana wins out, You would have had four teams at the end of the season with 28 and 16 records. And then you have to go to a whole bunch of tiebreak lovers. Okay, so that one’s not possible, but it was fun to do. So let’s do the one that could still be possible. Indiana wins out and Atlanta wins out, okay? Minnesota goes to two. Valkyries go to one, Vegas, three. This is what we’re learning. Atlanta stays in fourth, then you go Indiana fifth, Washington sixth, Dallas seventh, New York eighth. This would put Golden State against New York in the first round. Minnesota versus Dallas.

Alex: I like that. Atlanta

Caitlin: Versus Indiana, which let’s be honest, this is a matchup everybody wants to see. And then Las Vegas versus Washington.

Alex: I think if Minnesota wins against Indiana, night one, rest your starters, right? I agree. If you lose your second game, not that big of a deal. And also for the conspiracy theorists that think sports is rigged, Atlanta versus Indiana.

Caitlin: Yeah, right.

Alex: Kind of

Caitlin: Want this to happen. They were in the playoffs last year and Atlanta knocked them out. I think, don’t quote me on that. So I feel like the movement is crazy. This is also, you guys, assuming that there’s not any spoilers that happen with these other games, which if they choose to rest starters,

Alex: Yeah,

Caitlin: They probably wouldn’t if it’s going to change their seating that much. But I kind of in your boat, I really. really want the Lynx to win tomorrow in Gainbridge. I want them to win that game more than they win at home on Thursday, because it will, it doesn’t necessarily, oh wait, yeah, it does. It would lock up the one seed for them. But, Yeah, I just like, I need to see them back in full force. You could rest your shoulders like

Alex: You’re in

Caitlin: A

Alex: Better spot, I think.

NWSL: The Defector Report on Misconduct Complaints

Caitlin: Okay, thanks for hanging with me. Sorry, that was actually really fun for me. I don’t know if it was that fun to listen to, but I enjoyed it. All right. We are going to switch gears to the NWSL. We’re actually going to start off with pretty serious topic. So just recently, I think in the last week, report or an article, I guess, was released by Defector Media. This is outlining some allegations So, we’re going to talk about that report, I’m going to do a brief history lesson. You’ve heard us talk about this before when we did kind of our history of the NWSL episode way, way back in the archives now. But the NWSL as a league just on its own has been plagued over time by sexual misconduct, in the Yates report, which was, I think came out around 2015, or no, not 2015 because that was 2019, 2018 around there. I was like, the league started in 2013. It was found that there was also a significant cover-up done by team executives and league officials. And so, as you can imagine, player confidence in the league’s ability to protect them was at an all-time low. And as a result of the Yates report, we got a couple of changes. So Jessica Berman came in as commissioner. Shortly after that, there were a lot of… firings of coaches and you know people in in leadership positions at various clubs and it would seem from this defector article that there’s some stipulations put in place for regular reporting, transparency by the league with state AGs and that there’s an anonymized player survey around whether or not they feel safe in their workplace basically. Okay. So, there have been over the last couple of years, reports made, right? Like, I think it would be a little bit, naive to think that nothing is happening. but What I think is troubling this time is that there seems to be a little bit of, and I’ll let you talk about this in just a second, but like a little bit of like a laissez-faire, like I don’t really care attitude, about what is being alleged by players. based on what is being shared, right? So I don’t know if you wanna kind of dive into it a little bit.

Alex: From the article, it seems that the reporting requirements of the settlement or whatever is happening there, it seems like there is almost like a loophole in it to say that there’s no report actually given to the AGs. it’s a powerpoint presentation that is given at some point to them. It kind of feels like it’s what I’m reading is just like a checkbox activity for the AGs and for the league.

Caitlin: Yeah, well, the PowerPoint, or the presentation, is what it was called in the article, and from sources around there, was related to, from my understanding, the anonymized survey results. They do actually get complaints filed, and the complaints, You actually could go on this article on defectormedia.com and like the complaint bulletin thing or whatever the document is there. But they are like so significantly redacted that in some cases they don’t even have, like a lot of times they’ll refer to it as like team A and team B. A lot of times they don’t even say like a letter. It’s just like team. It’s like team and then it’s redacted. And then it’s redacted. And so it’s troubling that in an effort what was supposed to be an effort around transparency, which is supposed to help the players feel like their voices are being heard, this is what you get. And people, the journalists who pulled this together and investigated this are rightly kind of raising the alarm to say like, is the league actually following through these allegations, are we investigating them? We were talking about the complexity of this earlier, of like, how do you do this? like in the middle of a season. Yeah, yeah. And it breaks my heart to think that there are, you know, if there’s eight misconduct allegations that there are eight women who have to show up at work every day, potentially like interact with somebody who they felt uncomfortable around. Now, It’s not new. Yeah, we’ve all done it, unfortunately. But to to me, because of the history of the league. To to not prioritize player safety and to not necessarily believe players or however that’s however that’s working on, I don’t want to I don’t want to allege that that’s what’s going on. the fact that we haven’t heard about any action, we don’t know if any disciplinary action has been taken, is saddening.

Alex: Yeah, and I think the whole point was, like you said, transparency, accountability, and it feels like it’s turning into we’re complying with the thing, but we’re not creating accountability. I think the other thing here was that if this becomes some sort of model that would be replicated in the NCAA or anywhere else, doesn’t seem like it’s a good model to help protect these players. And so I just hope it doesn’t become that for other players to feel like they make a complaint and then seems like nothing maybe happens with it.

Caitlin: Yeah, yeah,

Alex: I would agree.

Caitlin: I think, I think, especially this league, like we’ve touted them as leading in the right way. This is really the first kind of public, really public thing. I know there’s people who have issue with like the Haslam group, owning the Columbus expansion team and things like that, but but from a player perspective, right? This feels like the first really big misstep that’s been reported in quite some time. And I hope that they do right by the players. You have so much momentum, right? And we talked about this with the WNBA commissioner like discussion to last week’s episode, I think, you don’t have a product, you don’t have players or fans. And there’s a, I would imagine there is a large portion of the fan base that will not tolerate, right? This kind of thing being, whether it’s turned a blind eye to or actively covered up like it was before, that’s just, it’s not gonna fly.

Alex: I agree.

NWSL Week in Review and the Playoff Logjam

Caitlin: Okay, we will transition, talk a little bit about last week’s action. Lots of really great games we got to watch. Oh, we watched the Denver Summit, Seattle rain game. And then we watched a very interesting. between Utah and Angel City and LA. There’s two red cards in the first like 10 minutes of the game or 15. Wild stuff, wild stuff. a little bit of Washington, Chicago, too. So all that to be said, you want to take us through wherever you want to stop. I don’t know

Alex: Where to stop. This is the problem. Maybe I’ll stop along with

Caitlin: Where you said Gotham clinched there at the top. That’s

Alex: Fine. Well, I have a stat further down, so

Caitlin: Maybe I’ll stop

Alex: At where that stat kind of ends

Caitlin: Up.

NWSL Standings and Remaining Schedules

Alex: So Gotham is in first. Fifty one points. Washington second, forty six. San Diego second, third and forty five. Utah and fourth at forty two. Portland and fifth at forty two. LA at 6 with 39, North Carolina at 7th with 39, Kansas City in 8th with 38, Seattle at 9th with 37, and Denver in 10th with 35. I think that’s probably a good cut-off point. Yeah. Mathematically, 11 through 15 are still in it.

Caitlin: Probably not.

Alex: But probably

Caitlin: Not. But probably not. Barring like some major collapse again by one of the top 10 teams. It’s pretty unlikely at this point. Yeah, you.

Alex: Oh yeah, so this is the thing. Fourth through 10th place is only separated by seven points. Yeah, that is right. So it’s gonna come down to teams that have the easiest fixtures left. We talked about this earlier. North Carolina closes with five straight games against top eight teams. San Diego has four of its last six against teams outside the top eight. And then some more interesting kind of stats I threw in here is Angel City is plus 15 goal differential, which I think is the best in the league. And they’re in sixth. Yeah. Seattle is even, dead even goal differential and they’re in ninth.

Caitlin: I don’t know how they do it. Stay so

Alex: Close. Yeah, so I mean, it’s just like we’ve say it every week, parody, parody, parody, like. Yeah. It’s just insane what this league has in parody.

Caitlin: Well, I mean, I think we watched a Denver game midweek and they drew to Bay FC 2-2 but then they turned around and beat Seattle 2-1. It’s like if you could have gotten the win against Bay, now you’re in the playoffs basically. And I think that’s what’s going to be interesting. Like you’ll probably cover these because I think you said like I couldn’t pick one game a day. I had to like do all of them because they’re all important. But from my perspective, I had a couple of things I was looking at was just the games this Denver plays Kansas City, so Kansas City is currently in eighth, Denver is in in 10th, if Denver wins, they are now tied with Kansas City for points, right? And I don’t know what the, we gotta look up what the tiebreakers are for NWSL and also the playoff structure are meant to do that. Denver has a really interesting rest of the way. So they play Kansas City, who currently are in eighth place, then they play Chicago, right? Then they play LA, who are currently in sixth, It’s the second to last team that’s keeping track. Chicago is the last team. And then they play North Carolina who’s in seventh. So Denver is in like this really unique position of like you truly control your own destiny because if you can get results, if you can get points and keep points from those top teams there in those last five games, I think you’re in. I didn’t quite do the math there but like I think that’s probably how that would work out for them. They probably need wins against Kansas City, LA, and North Carolina. Okay, now this coming week, again, kind of my focus was Utah plays North Carolina. Utah right now is on 42 points, North Carolina is on 39. What this sparked in my brain was like, how could we get as many teams as possible on 42 points by the end of this weekend? So if North Carolina beats Utah, that’s two teams on 42, right? And then you also have Washington playing LA. So if LA beats Washington, they will also be on 42 points. And then you’ll have four teams sitting on 42 points. Now Portland plays, oh, I didn’t write down who they play. They probably play someone that they’re favorable against and they’ll move out of there. But just a sense of like how many, the teams are so close at the bottom. And so like they’re gonna end up in this like seeding battle the same way we’re talking about the W right now. But. For the most part.

Alex: You didn’t do a Rain Man chart for

Caitlin: This one. Not yet. Not yet. I’ll get there. I’ll get there I’m super excited for Denver. I think again like to see the success of an expansion to like that Who’s kind of had like a weird start like you? You had like the weird like we didn’t play we played in the big stadium and then we played in a different stadium now We play in our temporary stadium. Yeah, which that is it again something worth pointing out from a Denver fan perspective The majority of the remaining games are played at Centennial Stadium in Colorado So they get that altitude advantage that home crowd advantage. They’ve had some sellouts It’s a good vibe there Sunset. Yeah. Yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s awesome So, let’s do an update on our kind of our

Alex: Any of these update. I don’t remember.

Caitlin: I updated them. The big, the big one,

Alex: Trinity Rodman,

Caitlin: Trinity Rodman.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: Somebody’s getting a sis.

Golden Boot Race and the NWSL Single Season Assist Record

Alex: Yeah. So so 10 out of 10 watch, we have Petra Tordon for Portland’s got seven

Caitlin: Goals and nine assists. I think since we put it on the page, I haven’t changed it for her.

Alex: Magic we had going earlier this year.

Caitlin: Yeah, the hex, the reverse

Alex: Hex. Trinity Rodman, 11 goals and seven assists. That’s one assist up. One

Caitlin: Goal and one assist up. She hadn’t equate productive weekend.

Alex: Cloé Lacasse, seven goals and 10 assists.

Caitlin: Yep. And then we talked about how LaCasse and Bethune both still on tennisists, which ties Tobin Heath’s single season assist record from 2016. Uh,

Alex: Golden boot race. I thought this was interesting. Ask Ashley Sanchez at 19 is one off the season single, single season record set by Temwa in 2024. Very

Caitlin: Crazy Barbara hot on her heels Banda with 16 so went up to 13. Yep, and then you added Janine Sonis, oh, that’s really 11 club So I think it was in last week’s episode I realized live that we had already beat the record for number of players with double-digit goals on the season So we’ve added another so I am going to butcher this. I meant to look it up Isata Traore from Boston is on 10 now and you still have Cat Raider and Mina Tanaka. Cat Raider from Houston, Mina Tanaka from Utah on nine. We have

Alex: 11.

Caitlin: Yeah, we’ve got five games to go. It’s going to happen. So I think it’s just like goals galore on the end of the world right now. It’s fun to watch.

What to Watch This Week

Alex: All right, let’s bring it home.

Caitlin: Bring it home.

Alex: All right,

Caitlin: We got what to

Alex: Watch. Thursday is our final

Caitlin: Day

Alex: Of the regular season. I tried to pull out some playoff teams in action. These must be on Thursday because I did not write a day. It

Caitlin: Says Thursday is the

Alex: Final day. Let’s hope it is here. Chicago, we have got Chicago with the Washington Mystics 6.30 p.m. on League Pass and local channels. Indiana Fever at the Minnesota Lynx, 7 p.m. on USA. I

Caitlin: Will be racing home for my soccer game to be sat for that.

Alex: Golden State Valkyries at Los Angeles Sparks, 9 p.m. on League Pass and local channels. And then Las Vegas Aces at Phoenix Mercury, 9 p.m. on League Pass and local channels. Playoff starts Sunday. Obviously, as of this recording, we don’t know the exact matchups. but we do have some times and stations. So we have a game at 1 p.m. Central on ABC. I think these are all on ABC, except for the one that we don’t know yet. 3 p.m. on ABC, 8 p.m. on ABC, and then there’s a TBD probably 5, 5.30-ish on Prime.

Caitlin: Yeah, you’d think it would snug right in between that 3 and 8 p.m. time slot. It is on Sunday though, so that’s, you’re competing with NFL. So I wonder, it could be, maybe they would do an earlier game. Although that’s competing with, noon is competing with the NFL too. All day

Alex: Sunday is football, so.

Caitlin: That’s right. Snug it in there, that’s why it’s on Prime.

Alex: All right. NWSL Friday racing Louisville versus San Diego wave 5 30 PM central on NWSL plus you got to win it and Seattle rain versus Boston legacy 7 30 PM central on NWSL plus. Then Saturday, we’ve got Kansas City Current versus Denver Summit, 1130 a.m. Central on CBS and Paramount Plus. The Dash is who’s playing. Washington Spirit versus Angel City, 530 p.m. Central on ION. And then Portland Thorns versus Houston Dash, 745 p.m. Central on ION. And then on Sunday, we’ve got the Utah Royals playing the North Carolina Courage, 6 p.m. Central on the Roku Channel. Yeah,

Caitlin: I think that was a

Alex: Free channel

Caitlin: That everyone gets. I think that was the the alternative to Victory Plus. Remember when that dropped or whatever? Kind of like all fell out. Yeah. Yeah, because that was their Sunday. It was Sunday on Victory

Alex: Plus. and

Caitlin: Then they went

Alex: Bankrupt. LPGA, we got the Walmart, is it the Northwest Arkansas Championship? It’s

Caitlin: The NW, whatever that

Alex: Stands for. Friday through Sunday on the Golf Channel. NCAA volleyball, we got Oregon at Wisconsin Thursday, September 24th at 7 p.m. I think it’s on Big Ten or Big Ten Plus. Okay. And then NCAA hockey actually started this past weekend. Only a few teams played this. It’s kind of the first big weekend. Thursday and Friday we’ve got number two Ohio State at number four Penn State, 5 p.m. Thursday, 3 p.m. Friday. Did not have stations yet lined up for these.

Caitlin: That’s like a rematch of semi-finals from last

Alex: Year’s

Caitlin: WCHA.

Alex: Because the NCAA tournament,

Caitlin: I think it was.

Alex: Because, yeah, they played, Ohio State played Wisconsin in the finals.

Caitlin: Yeah, it must have been. I remember Tess

Alex: Janicki. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. I think that is a match-up.

Caitlin: Yeah, so check it out.

Momentum and Setbacks

Alex: Yeah. All right, momentum, setbacks. Oh, man. You got one? I mean, the whole report with the NWSL

Caitlin: Was a

Alex: Bummer. I need to change this to bummers, instead of setbacks.

Caitlin: Bummers, yeah, bummers. A lot of times it’s like

Alex: Bummers. Disappoint. Yeah, disappoint. I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed. Yes, exactly. I think that’s mine, that was, you ran that past me this morning, I was like, well, that’s a bummer to hear.

Caitlin: Yeah, I think, I think I would, that’s probably mine too. I just feel it’s so, it is so disappointing, right? Yeah. Because you want to believe, man. I feel, opinion, I feel like this constantly happens to women. As soon as you feel like you are making some amount of progress, you have some amount of momentum, something happens like this that feels like it could take it all away. We’ve seen this in the WNBA this season, right? With some of the… Yeah. antics from fans, people who attend, right? I’m not even they’re not even worth calling fans. And it’s just it the fight that women have to go through to be taken seriously to be given the seat at the table, to be able to be put on the airwaves, to have the fans show up in the seats. The fight that has had to go into that is, I don’t even think that we, I don’t even think that we, as women’s sports fans, fully appreciate all of the work over years and years and years that has had to go into that. shit like this comes up and all of a sudden it could set you back years. You don’t see the same stuff on the men’s side. And again, that is a podcast for another day, right? Because there are structural things that make that the way that it is. Systemic things that make that the way that it is. And so it’s frustrating when you You think this league has so much momentum, things are going well, the commissioner seems to be doing a good job. They’re engaging with fans in the right way. They’re making sure they’re building the community that they want. And then all of a sudden it’s like, and our players don’t feel

Alex: Safe.

Caitlin: Right? And we don’t know, there’s been some coaching dismissals and firings, like maybe those were done under the guise of, oh, the team’s not performing, but like, that’s been the action and they’re trying to, but at the same time, it’s, it’s hard to hear as a fan. So

Alex: I agree. Yeah. Momentum.

Caitlin: Oh man, us. We just got tickets on tickets. We were going to playoffs. I didn’t think you

Alex: Were gonna take mine. I was like, we’re on our way up. We

Caitlin: Got the

Alex: Season tickets.

Caitlin: It’s us. We were

Alex: Talking at the game. For those of you who don’t know me well, I have never, until the last few years, been a big basketball fan.

Caitlin: Yeah, yeah. And so somehow the first- He hated basketball was his declaration when we started dating.

Alex: The first season tickets I’ve ever bought were basketball.

Caitlin: Yeah, it’s going to be fantastic. Yeah, I’m really excited for the playoffs across the board. I’m going to be a nervous wreck to be honest with you. true Minnesota sports fans over here. but also like, I love bringing the girls to that. I mean, Lisa Leslie in her. Kind of, maybe this is my momentum, right? But it’s like, swinging the pendulum from what I just said about the challenges of women in sports, women’s sports, whatever it is, Lisa Leslie in her speech, kind of at the Sparks game. talking about her statue was like, I played for, I should have pulled the quote, but like, she’s like, I played for the man heckling me in the stands. I played for, you know, X, Y, Z reason. I played so that you could bring your kids here and that they could see that this was possible. Right? Like it gives me goosebumps to think about, but like the fact that our girls,

Alex: Yeah, they won’t know what we’re all worth.

Caitlin: For them to show up and have tens of thousands of people screaming and cheering for a bunch of badass female athletes. Like, I’m like, it’s like living my dream, you know? it was, this is a little bit of a sidebar, but tonight I’m putting our oldest to bed and she listens to these little stories on a little device that she has and she’s got one about the history of soccer. I go, oh, you should listen to that one. She told me to pick for her. And I, and she goes, oh, that one’s sad. I was like, oh, what does it say? And she’s like, well, they talk about how they banned the women from playing for 50 years. She has no concept of the idea that women wouldn’t have been allowed to play. And I love that that is what she gets to see and we need to continue to support these players and the fans that go support them in ways that are meaningful, make sure that they feel safe, make sure that they feel seen and supported and this will continue to thrive if you do that. But you have to do that, Lisa Leslie, next commissioner,

Alex: WNBA. Go for it.

Caitlin: I’m

Alex: Out. All right, Instagram threads, YouTube, RGG underscore pod, rggpod.com and raising the game pod at gmail.com.

Caitlin: We’ll be back next week with episode 39.

Alex: Yes, I was going to say 40,

Caitlin: I’m all screwed up now. We’re close and we will be in playoff mode. We will have US Women’s National Team roster probably by then. There’s going to be a WPBL champion for the first time. We’ll have big PWHL news to talk about.

Alex: Hopefully it’s big. Hopefully it’s not disappointing.

Caitlin: Well, we’re going to talk about it either way, so hope you come back next week. Thanks for being here.

Alex: Bye.

Caitlin: Bye.