Date, Time, and Location: Sunday, October 4th, 1:00pm, Chase Center
Broadcast Information: NBC (full national), Peacock (streaming)
The Golden State Valkyries continue the playoffs with the semifinals, hosting the first two games of the series starting with Sunday afternoon’s opener. The Las Vegas Aces are the opponent, the only team that the Valkyries have not defeated this season after the defending champions won their deciding game on Wednesday to advance. Each series has its own broadcaster for this round and this series will be carried by NBC and their related outlets. The opening game will be nationally broadcast on NBC and streamed on Peacock, which will carry all games.
The Valkyries
It is a clean initial injury report for the Valkyries heading into this game. They had a pretty set approach in the series against Dallas, but will have a different set of decisions to make to match up in this series. The approach to perimeter defense should be clear, but Las Vegas could run double-post lineups for nearly the entire game, which could affect the effectiveness of the smallball lineups, which were used for both offensive and defensive reasons in recent games. That might also affect how the Valkyries handle their backup center minutes.
The Opposition
Las Vegas swept the season series with the Valkyries, but the last of those meetings came in late June when the Aces were ahead of them in the standings. Golden State closed the gap and then finished one game in front of them as Las Vegas went 19-9 after that point to close the regular season. They were able to get the win at home on Wednesday against Indiana to advance to this point, so they do have the extra day of rest and not a particularly long trip to get to this game even though they did not know whether they would be hosting this game instead until late last night.
The roster for the Aces looks slightly different from the last time they faced the Valkyries. Before the roster guarantee date, they decided to waive Chennedy Carter despite her scoring contributions off of the bench, signing Justine Pissott away from her developmental player contract with Indiana, but not getting a ton of minutes from the rookie so far. Janiah Barker, one of their draft picks, ended up being out for the year before making an appearance and the team signed Japanese point guard Mai Yamamoto, who has become an important player for them off of the bench. Starting power forward NaLyssa Smith also suffered a season-ending injury and they added depth at center by bringing in veteran Kalani Brown near the end of the season.
Las Vegas’s injury situation is a bigger deal coming into this game as Dana Evans is listed as out while Stephanie Talbot is listed as questionable after being ruled out right before their last game. It dropped them down to a rotation of eight players with only one backup perimeter player, making it hard for them run smallball lineups for more than a few minutes. Jewell Loyd is their third threat on the perimeter as her backcourt mates ended up playing the entire last game. Brianna Turner started as a defensive center option while Cheyenne Parker-Tyus came off of the bench to provide additional post offense.
Leave a Reply