The Toronto Tempo faced an Atlanta Dream team on Sunday that has its eyes on a championship, and proved to be a tough test. While the Tempo got off to a hot start, growing tensions between Tempo forward Isabelle Harrison and Dream All-Star Angel Reese resulted in a flagrant 2 foul and an ejection for Harrison. She left the game in the third quarter.
“I thought Izzy was playing so well for us, and she was a big target,” head coach Brondello said after the game. “I thought she did a great job on Angel Reese, and that’s a hard guard.”
Before being ejected, Harrison was the leading scorer for the Tempo, with 17 points in 19 minutes of play. At the time, she was also the only Tempo player who had scored 10 or more points. In the end, the Tempo fell 102-77 to Atlanta.
“[The Dream] lifted the intensity up and their aggressiveness kind of took us out of what we needed to do, but yeah, losing Izzy obviously hurt,” Brondello said.
The Tempo were also down another frontcourt player as center Nyara Sabally was a late scratch from the game. Sabally tweaked her hamstring during the Tempo’s overtime win against the Connecticut Sun, missing Friday’s game in Washington. She warmed up for Sunday’s game, but was ultimately ruled out.
“It’s a long season,” Brondello said on Sabally’s prognosis. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint, but [Sabally]’s been so good for us. She’s an impact player for us, so losing her… it’s hard for us.
“Still, we want to make sure she’s 100 per cent.”
With Sabally and then eventually Harrison out for the Tempo, the duties under the rim fell to Temi Fagbenle. Sunday was Fagbenle’s second game back with the team after a shoulder injury sustained on May 8 kept her sidelined. Still on a minutes restriction, Fagbenle played 17 minutes – up from the eight minutes she played against Washington.
“When you’ve been out for a while, you just need time,” Brondello said about Fagbenle’s ramp-up. “It’s not about perfection right now, it’s just about getting confident in the shoulder, and then playing, letting the adrenaline take over from there.”
Putting this loss in the rearview mirror, the Tempo will now head out on a three-game road trip over the next week. They will start in Indiana to play Caitlin Clark and the Fever before making stops in Connecticut and Atlanta.
“Just trying to have consistent effort and execution for as long a period as we can, but staying in the moment, not getting too high, too low,” Brondello said of her team’s goals for this next stretch. “I think sometimes the emotions get the best of us, and take away from how we want to play, but they’re all controllable.”
While Tuesday’s game is their last of the Commissioner’s Cup tournament, the Tempo have already been mathematically eliminated from making the final. The New York Liberty will be representing the Eastern Conference to try and win the tournament. Still, the Tempo have another opportunity to make money for Lay-Up Basketball, their local charity partner for the WNBA’s in-season tournament.
“I love going on the road. It’s an opportunity for us to continue to grow together, bond together,” Brondello continued. “[We will be] playing really good teams, and hopefully [get to] continue to show more of our identity as we go.”
