On a night Maya Moore Irons had her number raised to the rafters, the current Lynx squad posted its sixth straight win and clinched a playoff berth.

It wasn’t always pretty, but the Lynx nonetheless beat Indiana 90-80 in front of 19,023, the Lynx’s largest regular-season crowd ever in Target Center.

Concluding a three-games-in-four-night stretch, the Lynx are in third place in the WNBA, one-half game behind second-place Connecticut.

Napheesa Collier again led the home team, as she continues her stellar post-Olympic success with 31 points. She is averaging 25.6 points in five games, making 51 of 77 shots, since returning from Paris with a gold medal as part of Team USA.

For the third straight game, Minnesota had five players in double figures.

Kayla McBride found her long range stroke in the second half by making three of four 3-pointers to finish with 19 points. Bridget Carleton also had a quartet of treys to finish with 16 points. Courtney Williams and Natisha Heideman each had 10.

In their past four games, the Lynx are averaging 93.5 points.

Minnesota (22-8) led by 13 after one quarter, but Indiana got within one at halftime. The Lynx were not safely in command again until a mid-fourth-quarter run.

Before the final 10 minutes, a classic video of Moore Irons urging fans to get on their feet and make some noise was shown on the Jumbotron.

The fans did just that, and then the current Lynx provided reasons to get loud again and again.

Up by three, McBride scored eight points in a game-deciding 14-2 stretch. Williams, Collier and Myisha Hines-Allen also had baskets.

Additionally, the Lynx tremendously improved in the defensive end when it came to grabbing loose balls. Indiana had just one of its 15 offensive rebounds in the final 10 minutes.

For the game, Minnesota was outrebounded 40-27, tying its lowest total of the season.

Caitlin Clark led the Fever (13-16) with 23 points and Kelsey Mitchell added 21. Aliyah Boston had 10 points and 15 assists.

Celebrating Maya
In just eight seasons, Moore Irons was a six-time all-star, five-time All-WNBA first-teamer, four-time league champion, Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player.

Her No. 23 joins Lindsay Whalen (13), Rebekkah Brunson (32), Seimone Augustus (33), and Sylvia Fowles (34) in the Target Center rafters. The quintet were starters on the 2015 and 2017 Lynx championship teams.

Passion, relentlessness and unselfishness were adjectives often thrown her way Saturday. Before the game, Moore Irons said her mindset was simple. “I tried to play as hard as I could.”

“The establishing of who the Lynx became, it started with Maya Moore’s entry point,” said coach Cheryl Reeve. “We were in six WNBA finals in her first seven years, and we won four championships, and we were a shot-clock violation away from winning five.”

Attending her first WNBA game as a youth, Clark got a hug from the legendary player at a postgame event.

“There’s no documentation of that moment, but obviously in my brain that was one of the most pivotal moments of probably my entire basketball career. Being a young girl, loving sports, that meant the world to me,” Clark said.

Yet, basketball was far from Moore Irons’ lone passion.

She left the sport in the prime of her career in 2019, in part, to focus on social justice issues. Her efforts helped overturn the conviction of Jonathan Irons, a family friend who she believed had been wrongfully imprisoned since 1998. The two married in 2020 and had a child in 2022.

“The journey that I had was not expected, but it was exactly the journey I was supposed to go on,” Moore Irons said before the game. “It’s important that we’re here now with closure and maybe just being able to move on, celebrate and just look back at all the amazing things we did during our dynasty.”

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