At the beginning of every year, Minnesota Lynx head coach and general manager Cheryl Reeve preaches the importance of early-season practices and training camp.
Not only does Reeve typically utilize that time to get new faces acclimated into the Lynx system, but she also treasures that span so her team doesn’t have a learning period like many teams do to start a season.
Early on in the 2018 campaign, that theory will get put to the test, as Minnesota enters an early stretch of road games this season.
“We want to hit the ground running. Our first six of nine games to start the year are on the road,” Reeve told Zone Coverage. “When everyone else is still trying to figure things out early in the season, we want to be ready and have things figured out.”
The Lynx (1-1 overall) will take on the New York Liberty on Friday night at Westchester County Center in the first road game of the year. Tina Charles --a tough and fun matchup for Minnesota’s Sylvia Fowles -- and the Liberty enter the game 0-1 on the season following a season-opening loss to Chicago on Sunday.
Friday’s game in the Big Apple marks the first of six games Minnesota will play on the road in its next seven contests.
Following New York, the Lynx will head to the nation’s capital on Sunday to play the Washington Mystics, before flying to Atlanta on Tuesday, back home for a game against Phoenix on June 1, and then back on the road in Los Angeles on June 3, Washington D.C. on June 7 and Connecticut on June 9.
“This start to the season, it’s going to be huge,” Lindsay Whalen said. “But I think you have to take it like that either way right now.”
With the regular season in full swing and the schedule shortened by a few weeks in 2018, the games are going to start racking up quickly for the Lynx. And this tough road stretch early on in the season will be a nice test for the defending champions.
“It’s going to be tough, this season the games are going to come quick,” Whalen said. “It will be all about the survival of the fittest and who can play well for really four nights a week.”
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