Williams Arena, the 89-year-old on-campus home of University of Minnesota basketball, is affectionately known by locals as "The Barn" for its resemblance, from the outside, to a place you store hay and livestock.
With Target Center in Minneapolis being massively renovated, and Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul occupied with pro hockey, the Barn is the temporary home of the WNBA Finals.
Game 2 of the series pitting the Los Angeles Sparks and host Minnesota Lynx will be played on Tuesday night.
On Sunday, the Lynx rallied from a large deficit before falling to the Sparks 85-84 in Game 1 of the best-of-five series.
On Monday, The Barn may have felt like a kind of woodshed for Lynx players, as Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve was still steaming mad about her team's first -quarter no-show in the opener.
"People say you battled, but that's what the hell you're supposed to do," Reeve said, recalling the Sparks' 12-0 run to start the game, and the 26-point lead opened up by the visitors before Minnesota rallied.
"You're competing for a championship. You're supposed to battle. So what is the good of that? We did what we were supposed to do in the 32 minutes. You guys can focus on that if you want to. That's Loserville, that's what that is."
That the Lynx held a lead with five seconds to play is a testament to their resolve, after an opening 10 minutes where they hit one of their first 11 shots and had zero rebounds.
But the end result was a loss, at home, and Los Angeles has an opportunity to clinch the WNBA crown on its home court, with the series headed west for Games 3 and 4.
The Sparks are certainly not resting on their Game 1 win, and practiced on Monday with new-found resolve.
"We played pretty good basketball, but we played five minutes of great basketball," Los Angeles forward Candace Parker said. "We won two quarters and we lost two quarters. I feel like we can build off of that, but we have to learn to adjust throughout the game, not going back after Game 1 and going back to the film and adjusting, but as individuals on the court."
The opening game's frantic finish, in which the lead changed hands four times in the final minute before Chelsea Gray's game-winning shot with two seconds left, was apparently great for the TV audience.
On Monday, WNBA officials noted that the ABC broadcast drew an overnight rating of 0.6, which is the best mark ever for a series opener. It is a 20 percent increase from last year's ratings when the same two teams met in the finals.
"It was a very emotional game," Sparks forward Nneka Ogwumike said. "I would say anything that could have happened in the game happened. I thought it was great for viewership, of course, and the fans and for the competition. This is the Finals championship round and you're going to see games like that."
