DALLAS — The Dallas Wings spent two days on the practice floor this weekend trying to fix what went wrong in a 90-86 home loss to the Minnesota Lynx, and Alysha Clark said the focus was simple: get the defense back to the same place every player can trust. The Wings were 1-2 after Thursday’s defeat, then closed the weekend with preparation for the Washington Mystics in the finale of a three-game homestand.
Clark said Dallas wanted to reestablish a new baseline on defense after seeing too much slippage in the early going. “We knew our defense wasn’t great, and there was slippage. People were falling back to whatever baseline they were used to from previous organizations or previous seasons here,” she said Sunday. “We wanted to reestablish a new baseline for this group so when stuff hits the fan, we all fall back to the same baseline. We have [four] games in seven days coming up, and you don’t really have time to practice, so you have to build good habits now.”
The timing matters because the Wings are still only a few games into a season with a roster that is learning each other in real time. Two straight practice days are rare once the schedule tightens, and Dallas is about to enter a stretch of four games in seven days. That makes Sunday’s work less about polishing and more about creating habits the team can lean on once the games start coming fast again.
For Azzi Fudd, the extra time came at the right moment. The No. 1 pick in this year’s WNBA Draft said the practice days gave the group a chance to move past discussion and into repetition. “Just having more time, more reps, and time to actually go up and down and play through things instead of just talking about it,” she said. Fudd added that the hardest part of leaving UConn was learning the play calls, saying, “I was there for five years, so all of their play calls and defensive calls are ingrained in my brain.”
She said veterans Odyssey Sims and Alysha Clark have helped make that adjustment easier. That kind of support has been important for Dallas as it tries to build continuity around a roster that is still in its first weeks together. For a player coming from one system that she knew almost by memory, the difference has been in the details, from terminology to timing to how quickly the Wings want each possession to be executed.
Jose Fernandez said the work over the weekend centered on the same core issues that showed up in the loss to Minnesota: post defense, rebounding and stopping dribble penetration. He said the Mystics came into Arlington at 2-1 after an overtime win at Indiana, where they beat the Fever 104-102 in their last game. That gave Dallas a second straight opponent with enough confidence to test whether the Wings’ practice corrections can hold up right away.
That is the real question for the Wings now, not whether they understand what needs fixing. They do. The test is whether a short practice window can produce a defense that stays connected once the games pile up and the room for adjustment disappears.
