Tempo can’t overcome poor shooting, drops WNBA opener

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Growing pains. They’re synonymous with expansion clubs, and the WNBA’s Toronto Tempo will not be the exception.

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On a night of historical firsts, starting with the arrival of professional women’s basketball in this city, something that was properly celebrated throughout the night, there was little historical about the actual performance of the Tempo, which dropped its first WNBA regular-season game, losing 68-65 to the Washington Mystics.

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The Tempo, to put it bluntly, could not score, certainly not with any consistency. They couldn’t score inside. They couldn’t score from the outside. The one thing that kept them in the game was their ability to get to the free-throw line, where they converted more often than not.

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The best shooting night on the team for anyone with any volume of shooting came from an expected source in wing Marina Mabrey, who was just 6-for-18 from the field but made up for it at the line, where she was good on 12 of 14.

Mabrey’s 27 points easily led the way for the Tempo, who as a team shot just 27% from the field and an even more woeful 20% from three-point range.

All the Tempo shooters seemed a bit to a lot off on the night, perhaps attributable to first-game jitters but more likely a product of just not having the on-court familiarity with each other that can come only with time.

“It was a very ugly game,” Tempo head coach Sandy Brondello said afterwards. “Hopefully they get way prettier than that as we move forward. You know, both teams have a lot of work to do but we ground it out, defensively. As I said before the game, we’re going to be a better defence right now. But yeah, we were poor on offence. I think we didn’t share the ball. We didn’t play as a team as much as we would have liked. But that’s an easy fix.”

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Fortunately for the Tempo, they have five days before their next game, and now have some very specific areas to pinpoint and use that time on.

“We just got to get back to being a selfless basketball team and making our defence create our offence,” Brondello said. “While we got shots, we really only had 11 points in transition. You would like to get that number up to at least 20.”

The team was built with a defensive identity in mind and while there were definitely more impressive moments defensively than offensively in the opener, there just weren’t enough of them to nudge this one into the win column.

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While the team looked energetic and fierce defending the perimeter, once the ball got inside, their lack of size let them down.

Brondello admitted that the Mystics’ size inside certainly affected the Tempo, as did their physicality. But from an offensive standpoint she felt the Tempo gave Washington a little too much respect by refusing to even attempt to finish inside once they got there. That led to a number of turnovers and stunted any potential runs from the home side.

The Mystics didn’t exactly light the world on fire with their shooting either, but outscored Toronto 40-16 in the paint, where the game was eventually won.

But in terms of debuts, this one had more than enough to keep the faithful coming back. It went right down to the wire as most three-point games do. It wasn’t the result the sellout crowd of 8,210 wanted, but it was entertaining, and that may have been enough.

The Tempo actually had a one-point lead with 32 seconds left, but could not close it out as Washington got to the line on consecutive trips and converted to put the game away.

The Tempo are back in action Wednesday at home at Coca-Cola Coliseum as they host the Seattle Storm in a 7 p.m. tipoff.

mganter@postmedia.com

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