WNBA Scores
Saturday, Jun 9th
Final
8:00 PM ET, June 9, 2012
The Minnesota Lynx have an excellent chance to match the best start in WNBA history.
They are facing a winless opponent coming off a difficult loss and are hopeful that star Seimone Augustus will return to the lineup.Augustus is listed as questionable Saturday night when the visiting Lynx look to improve to 9-0 and drop the Tulsa Shock to 0-8 for the year.Minnesota got late news that Augustus would be out Wednesday but it hardly mattered in a 79-55 home rout of Seattle. Augustus, averaging a team-high 18.1 points, was sidelined with a right quad strain."Seimone, right before the game, she's been having some problems with her -- I hate to say knee, because you guys are going to think it's a knee problem -- it's really a muscular (issue) right above her knee she's been struggling with," coach Cheryl Reeve said.The Lynx are one win shy of becoming the third team to start 9-0, with Los Angeles accomplishing the feat in 2001 and 2003.They built a 17-point lead after one quarter Wednesday and put five players in double figures, led by Taj McWilliams-Franklin's 17 points."It's disconcerting for the rest of the league when we don't have our best player and we still win by almost 30," McWilliams-Franklin said.Tulsa remains off to the second-worst start in franchise history after blowing a seven-point lead with 32 seconds left in regulation in Friday's 98-91 overtime defeat at Chicago. Ivory Latta scored 25 points to lead the Shock, who allowed the Sky to make three 3-pointers over the final 30 seconds of the fourth quarter in an 11-4 run for the home team.The Shock started 0-13 in 2002 when the franchise was based in Detroit.The Lynx have won six straight over the Shock, but are trying to not look at their opponent's record."We're undefeated for a reason but we gotta remember that, not get too high on ourselves, which we're not," guard Candice Wiggins said. "We're a humble team. I feel like Tulsa is kind of like going to be one of the toughest games of the year."Lindsay Whalen averaged a team-high 15.8 points as Minnesota won the four matchups with Tulsa last season by an average of 18.5 points. The Lynx are the league's highest-scoring team at 85.9 points per game as they get ready to face a Shock team that likes to play at a fast tempo."We're planning for chaos," Reeve told the Lynx's official website. "That's what they do to teams and they turn teams over. They're scoring 23 points a game off their turnovers, so we're planning for that."Tulsa's reserves combined for 62 points Friday. Glory Johnson and Scholanda Dorrell each scored 17.