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WNBA FINALS: SPARKS VS LYNX

October 16, 2016

Brian Agler

Los Angeles, California

Lynx - 85, Sparks - 79

BRIAN AGLER: I thought it was a hard-fought game. Both teams competed extremely hard. I thought Minnesota played -- probably the difference in the game to me, they played with a little bit more poise than we did. Obviously Maya Moore hit some big shots, made some big plays, both ends of the floor. Got a lot of respect for them. They're a championship team. They're well-coached. They've got great competitors, and they did what they had to do tonight.

Q. What's the hardest part about slowing down Maya?
BRIAN AGLER: Like I've said before, I've said this several times, she reminds me -- they're not the same type of player, but she's a lot like Cynthia Cooper from the standpoint that no matter what happens, they're always on balance. They're always -- they always have the ability to gather themselves and finish on balance. It doesn't matter if she's taking it to the rim or if she's off the dribble. She's good. And then she has the ability to get you in bad spots and draw fouls. She's difficult to defend.

Q. Talk to me about Chelsea Gray's performance tonight. She made four out of five threes.
BRIAN AGLER: Yeah, Chelsea played well, competed hard. She's been playing well here the last month, month and a half, and we're going to need her to play well again on Thursday.

Q. Alana Beard said, We need to control what we can control starting with the focus, intensity and will to win. How would you grade your team on that tonight?
BRIAN AGLER: I thought it was -- I'd grade us an A with what you just said. I think this game is really -- we're going to learn a lot from this game. Now, I don't know if we're going to see the results on Thursday, but this game is really going to help us because it's the first time this team has been in this kind of environment, and of course we're playing against a great opponent that's been there several times, and I think that you could tell the difference in both teams. I mean, they were playing hard, competing hard. My hat's off to my team for how they competed.

But we've got to play -- there's certain times during the course of the game that you have to play under control and with a lot of poise, and we didn't quite show that all the time tonight.

Q. Coming from your own Finals experience, what are you telling the team going into this do-or-die Game 5 that not a lot of the players have been through before?
BRIAN AGLER: We'll learn from this game, and we'll play better on Thursday. We'll prepare, and we'll play better. I've been in this situation several times. The two ABL games, championships, we won in the fifth game. Not a whole lot different than tonight, but this experience, going through this, I could just sort of tell from our facial expressions in the locker room, this was new for them.

We didn't lack desire to win, or a will. We competed hard enough. We've just got to put that back together and play with more poise.

Q. In the sense that you've got four days now before Game 5; is that a lot of time to have to keep rehashing this or is that good for your players to get their legs back under them and get some rest?
BRIAN AGLER: I think both teams will be much more fresh come Thursday. Both teams have one flight to make, and I'm sure they'll go tomorrow. We go on Tuesday. Both teams will have had a chance to get their legs back underneath them. I think it'll be competitive again on Thursday. That's what I anticipate.

Q. You guys were in a similar situation the previous series with Chicago, you had a chance to close out the game, unfortunately you didn't, but you did close out in the next game. Is there something that you can take from this series that can apply to Game 5 in this situation, as well?
BRIAN AGLER: You know, in the Chicago game, although I thought Chicago was playing and competing very hard, I don't think we played quite as aggressive and were much more passive in that game up there in Chicago. Tonight we were trying. We were making things happen down the stretch. We think we had the game tied at one time. The game was in the balance there with under two or three minutes, so we had opportunities, it's just the ability to play with poise down the stretch.

Again, I couldn't be more proud of how we competed. Now we've got to partner that with poise and execution.

Q. Rebounding was a big differential, 16, but you ended up getting five more possessions offensively. I thought transition baskets were hard to come by, 22-4 differential. Was it more your lack of push or was it something they did with resistance?
BRIAN AGLER: Well, in the first half I think they had 31 of their 46 points were either from the free-throw line, second chance or transition. That's what I consider you're giving your opponents easy scoring opportunities. So obviously for us to play our best, we have to eliminate those situations.

We played well, probably our best game of the series just the other night here, and of course we rebounded better. You know, we're going to need that same kind of effort come Thursday on the boards.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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