The Washington Mystics defeated the New York Liberty 80-64 on Friday night to start their 2023 WNBA season.
If you looked solely at preseason rankings, you would think that the Mystics would lose this game. After all, the Liberty have three top-tier superstars in Breanna Stewart, Courtney Vandersloot and Sabrina Ionescu while the Mystics have one in franchise player Elena Delle Donne. And the WNBA power rankings often had the Liberty ahead of the Mystics.
The thing is that game have to played on the floor.
Washington held New York to just 34.3 percent shooting while shooting 45.