The Toronto Tempo’s home opener was everything the team hoped it would be – apart from a victory. After a 68-65 loss on opening night to the Washington Mystics, Toronto’s brand-new WNBA team will be back on Wednesday to play the Seattle Storm, with the focus being on protecting home court.
“It was an amazing atmosphere… we want to protect this home court,” head coach Sandy Brondello said at Monday’s practice. “We let one slip, but we just got to have next-game mentality.”
Friday’s debut was “an ugly game,” as Brondello put it at the time. After a condensed off-season and quick training camp, the team is still building on-court chemistry, especially offensively.
Brondello explained on Friday night that defensive energy usually develops a little faster with newer teams, since smooth offence requires more trust between players. Trying to build that trust was an emphasis in practice to start the new week.
When asked what the team was doing to build that trust, point guard Julie Allemand said the players are “getting to know each other, asking, ‘What’s your strength?’ Just really learning about each other.
“I think it was a lot of pressure [in the first game],” Allemand continued, “because the chemistry wasn’t there yet.”
The Tempo shot 27 per cent from the field against Washington, 20 per cent from three-point range, and only made 10 assists in the game. Their highest scorer was Marina Mabrey with 27 points, who they picked up as an unrestricted free agent in the expansion draft because of her ability to score from distance. After Mabrey, the next highest scorer was guard Brittney Sykes, who scored 14 points.
With four days between the home opener and matchup with Seattle, the team had time to rest and regroup after an emotional game, but also get back in the gym for some solid practice sessions.
There are several points of improvement the team wants to see in their second game, with the overall goal being to get better each day.
“Turnovers, watching how we take care of the ball, obviously making a shot, but also sharing the ball,” Sykes listed as things the team wants to do better with against Seattle.
“Just doing those things will carry us. For us, we know that our identity stays the same, and we just work on what we got to work on.”
Another strategy in building comfort on the court this week was practising on their actual home court. With no scheduled events at Coca-Cola Coliseum prior to Wednesday, the Tempo moved their practice sessions from their usual facility at the University of Toronto to the arena.
New basketball rims are notoriously hard to make shots in, and breaking them in while also letting the players get more comfortable playing in the new space was the reason for the move.
Prior to Friday’s game, the only time the team had on the Coca-Cola court was their sole home exhibition game against Connecticut, and the two game-day shootarounds on those days.
“We didn’t shoot the ball so well [on Friday],” Brondello said about holding practice in the arena. “You want to get used to the new rims and just the surroundings, to the depth of where the seats are, and just to feel comfortable. So, it’s been a good week for that.”
A new opponent means a new set of challenges, but the Storm are similar to the Mystics in that they’re a team trying to rebuild the roster.
After losing most of their 2025 veteran core – including Sykes – in WNBA free agency, they reloaded with a mix of young talent, draft picks, and veterans.
Most notably, they completed a draft-night trade with the Golden State Valkyries and took LSU star Flau’jae Johnson No. 8 overall in the WNBA draft.
The Tempo’s biggest challenge in their second game though, may be stopping second-year French centre Dominique Malonga.
Malonga, who was drafted to Seattle No. 2 overall in 2025 after Paige Bueckers was taken first by the Dallas Wings, is a dynamic post player who stretches the floor with her versatility. The Tempo are notably undersized, lacking post-player depth, and are struggling with injuries to the players they have at those positions.
Isabelle Harrison, a 6-foot-3 forward, has been out for a few weeks after suffering a hand injury in preseason training camp. She brings size, but also a familiarity with Brondello’s style of play, having been on her New York Liberty roster for the 2025 season.
Harrison is progressing in her recovery, with updates on her condition to be given at a later date from the team.
The team’s primary centre, Temi Fagbenle, got “a little beat up” in Friday’s game, according to Brondello. The team is listing her as questionable for the Seattle game with a shoulder injury, but she was not present in practice at Monday or Tuesday, leaving them without another post player.
The move to assign both of the Tempo’s developmental contracts to centres – Mariella Fasoula and Nina Milic – was in part because of these injuries, and also the team’s general lack of depth at the position.
Under the rules of the WNBA’s new developmental contract, these players can be available for 12 games in the season, are paid a weekly stipend plus a bonus whenever they do play, and practise and travel with the team.
Fasoula was made available for Friday’s game, so she has 11 games left. Milic had to clear waivers after being released from training camp on Thursday, so the Tempo re-signed her on Saturday. She has 12 games left.
Brondello anticipates that at least one of them will be made available to play against Seattle.
Wednesday’s game will be the Tempo’s last in Toronto before they head out to play four road games in seven days against the LA Sparks, Phoenix Mercury, and Minnesota Lynx.
Brondello is excited about the run of games coming up.
“I like that we actually have a lot of games coming up, because that’s where we’re going to learn,” she said at Tuesday’s practice. “We need those [in-game] experiences to learn, and for the coaches to learn a little bit more about these players, because we haven’t coached many of them either.”
