ATLANTA -- A professional athlete rarely needs extra motivation to bring out the best, no matter the sport. But the Atlanta Dream got some anyway.
Mired in a four-game losing streak, the Dream received a recorded message from their head coach Michael Cooper, who is recovering from treatment for tongue cancer, and took a leave of absense from the team. Assistant coach Karleen Thompson said the message came to the team earlier this week, showed that Cooper was in good spirits and that it had a lasting effect on the team.
That could have been the motivation for forward Angel McCoughtry, who had an early impact in the game on Tuesday.
McCoughtry averaged 14.5 points per game in the Dream's two previous meetings with the Connecticut Sun this season. With five minutes to go in the first half, she already had 15 points. At halftime her total was 19, just shy of her 19.3 points per game scoring average.
McCoughtry finished with a game-high 25 points, and added seven rebounds to lead the Dream to an 89-80 win over the Sun.
"Angel is Angel," said Thompson after Tuesday's win. "When you get a hot hand, you go with it. Tiffany got a hot hand and we kept going to Tiffany. Angel has that in her, but we also have other players that are capable of doing that. When they did, Angel was passing to them. It was a good team win."
The "other players" Thompson spoke of were Tiffany Hayes, Erika de Souza, Aneika Henry and Sancho Lyttle.
Hayes, de Souza and Henry finished with 23, 17 and 10 points, repectively. Lyttle had nine points and 14 rebounds.
A back-and-forth- first quarter that ended in a 21-21 deadlock, gave way the Dream pulling away in the second quarter. Led by McCoughtry's 12 points in the second quarter, the Dream's lead seesawed between two points and six, before the halftime horn sounded with the Dream ahead 44-41.
"We wanted to get more points in the paint, attacking the basket, and they did well with that," said Thompson. "Getting the ball into our post, and our guards attacking from the perimeter. We got out and ran, and we controlled the boards."
Almost 64 percent of Atlanta's first-half points came from inside the paint. The Dream also attacked in transition, scoring 14 points off the fast break, compared to just two from Connecticut.
The Dream controlled to tempo of the game, and worked aggressively to get the ball inside for scoring opportunities. When the Sun realized Atlanta's game plan, they altered theirs, and that meant putting the Dream on the charity stripe.
Coming into Tuesday's game, Atlanta was dead last in the WNBA with a 72.4 percent free-throw average. McCoughtry was very candid about the team's shortcoming.
"If we want to be a championship team, you have to make free throws," said McCoughtry.
She did.
McCoughtry hit 4 of 5 of hers, and the team went 18 for 23 (78.3 percent). While the improvement wasn't great (78.3 percent is just below league average), Thompson was happy with her team from the free-throw line.
"I just think that their focus was there," said Thompson. "We were attacking the basket, drawing the fouls and we had to focus on our free throws, so they took advantage of that."
In the second half, the Sun worked hard to shut McCoughtry down. That's when the unselfish forward started distributing the ball on offense.
Sixteen of Hayes' 23 points came in the second half, as did 10 of DeSouza's. Henry, who had 10 points off the bench, scored four points in the final two quarters of the game.
The second-half surge generated a 10-point lead with just fewer than six minutes to play. The Sun fought to cut that lead to two in just under 80 seconds.
Thompson called a timeout, and adjusted her troops.
"(We) just talked about refocusing," said Thompson. "We have moments in the game where we have lapses . At that point I just knew 'Let's call a timeout, gather ourselves, and they were ready to go when we came back out."
The Dream then went on six-point run and never looked back. Hayes landed four free throws down the stretch, and de Souza two, to ice Connecticut's comeback attempt.
