After losing one of their key players in their last game, the Toronto Tempo will be without All-Star guard Brittney Sykes for the foreseeable future as she recovers from a plantar fascia injury.
They didn’t let that blow stop them from mounting a comeback in Connecticut Friday night, winning 101-97 against the Sun. Down 16 points, Marina Mabrey’s 21 fourth-quarter points pushed them over the edge.
“It’s hard when you lose one of your best players, and then you kind of have to adjust how you play a little bit,” said head coach Sandy Brondello after the win. “For me, this was a win for how we got gritty, and we got tough, and we found a way.”
Mabrey was unconscious in the final frame, shooting 5-for-5 from beyond the arc to get the Tempo back in it. She finished the game with a career-high 37 points with nine made three-point shots.
“I’m locked in the whole time, but there are defences out there geared to stop me,” Mabrey said, “so I have to look for pockets where they relax, and then that’s when I can attack.”
My teammates do a really good job of recognizing when they’re relaxing and letting me kind of go a little bit rogue, try to find some shots.”
Mabrey also had four rebounds, four assists, and was a +21 in this game.
“I looked like I was watching Diana Taurasi out there,” Brondello said, referencing her former player, who she won the 2014 WNBA Championship with. “I’ve seen her getting [Taurasi’s] fire, and just how effortless it is, just how far she can shoot out, and the confidence that she has in it.”
We’re lucky to have her. It was nice watching [the team] make a comeback, because we weren’t playing well, especially in that first half. We found some life.”
The Tempo’s centre, Temi Fagbenle, helped the team in the victory as well. Coming back from a shoulder sprain she sustained in the season opener, Brondello mentioned before the game that Fagbenle would still be on a minutes restriction against the Sun.
“Minutes restriction went out the window tonight,” Brondello joked about Fagbenle’s 32 minutes played.
Fagbenle ended the game with 19 points off 8-for-9 shooting from the field, a perfect 2-for-2 from three, nine rebounds, two assists, and two stocks.
“Anyone is going to be tired, so that’s not going to be an excuse,” Fagbenle said of her performance. “So you just gotta be mentally tough, and that’s how you win these games, like just mental toughness at the end of the day, and that’s what I should dig into.”
Rounding out a trio of key performances for Toronto on Friday was the wing from Spain, Maria Conde. She finished the game with a season high and WNBA career-high of 19 points off the bench, including some clutch free throws at the end of the fourth quarter.
“I think she’s been great for us all season long,” Brondello said of Conde, who was called “the best international player yet to make her WNBA debut” before the 2026 season. “She’s just a competitor, she plays the game in the right way, and she can score on three different levels.”
Conde shot 5-for-8 from distance against the Sun, with six rebounds, three assists, and one block. Her adjustment to the WNBA in her first season has come with a few twists and turns as she helps fill the holes injury has left open on this team. Yet, her veteran international experience was evident against the Sun as she did a bit of everything to help hold the Tempo steady.
Maybe counted out due to missing Sykes, the Tempo turned a frustrating deficit into a thrilling win. It’s becoming a theme of their inaugural season, being able to claw back into games and make it interesting down the stretch.
“You’re a new team, you’ve got 12 players from all over the world, a lot of them haven’t played together, so you’re still trying to build those connections off the court,” Brondello said of building the Tempo’s identity. “Sometimes we’ve let that slip, but you know, I think we just have a little bit more heart and togetherness.”
The Tempo have one more game on the road in Atlanta on Monday before returning home to Toronto next week.
