Gabby Williams missed all four of her shots in the first quarter of the first WNBA Finals game the Golden State Valkyries have ever played. By the end of the night the Chase Center crowd was chanting her name.
Williams scored 26 points, 16 of them in the second quarter, and made four free throws in the final 78 seconds as the Valkyries held off the Atlanta Dream 68-64 on Saturday to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven series. No other Golden State player reached double figures.
"We always knew we were going to find a way somehow," Williams said on the court afterward, according to The Associated Press.
A quarter for the record book
Atlanta led by eight after one quarter, with Angel Reese scoring 11 points on 5-of-6 shooting. Williams changed the game in the second. She finished 6 of 9 from the field in the period, and her 16 points tied for the third-highest single-quarter total in Finals history, behind only Jackie Young's 21 and Angel McCoughtry's 19, according to the Valkyries.
The team said it was also the most she has scored in any quarter of her career.
The burst came in a hurry. Williams scored the last seven points of a 10-0 run that flipped a deficit into a lead before halftime, using a ghost screen at the top of the key for a layup, sprinting into the corner for a go-ahead 3-pointer, then picking off a pass and going the length of the floor for a left-handed finish.
Finishing at the stripe
Neither offense found much after that. Golden State shot 32.1% for the night and made 7 of 33 from 3-point range, and the Dream took a 64-61 lead on a pair of Rhyne Howard free throws with a little more than three minutes left.
Atlanta did not score again. Williams went to the line with 1:18 remaining and made both to put Golden State in front, then added two more with 4.1 seconds left to end it.
She finished 8 of 22 from the floor, 3 of 11 from deep and 7 of 8 at the line in 33 minutes, and Golden State was 16 points better with her on the court, per the official box score.
