WNBA Pre-Season in Austin: Las Vegas at Dallas

Sunday night, CB, JAL, Tanya, their kid (redacted) and myself went to the Moody Center at the University of Texas to catch a WNBA pre-season game.  

WNBA does play some games not-at-home but in cities where they know there's interest in women's sports - like my own Austin, Texas.  And given my own watching of women's basketball, both college and pro, that tracks. 

The game was well-attended, if not sold out.  I think it holds just over 10,000 when set up for women's games (they don't open the upper tier) and I could see some empty seats, but there may have been a story there as they were in one block in one area.  

This was a game between the Dallas Wings and Las Vegas Aces.  Las Vegas won last year's WNBA championship, and deservedly so.  And, along the way, two of my favorite players became A'ja Wilson and Chelsea Gray.  I watched some of Dallas last year but felt they were being coached horribly - and it became an exercise in frustration.  But this year is clearly a different story.  

some of who we saw play

I won't get into a recap of a pre-season game, but I did get to see new phenom Azzi Fudd - and she was as advertised and what I'd seen on TV in college.  Her game translates just very well to the WNBA.   

Seeing a game live is always different from television.  You get a lot better idea of how messy some of that bad reffing really is.  And some of how rough the play really does get - I think there was some chirping going on.

The fan base was interesting.  Some people dressed for the game - like, it looked some folks were headed to go clubbing, which surprised me.  Lots of Dallas jerseys.  Some kids, but fewer than I expected.  When we went to Phoenix Mercury games back when we lived there in the 00's, it would be a few parents and a fleet of middle-school girls who played.  Here it was individual or pairs of kids with parents if there were kids at all.  And then we had the row of young women in front of us all taking glamor selfies at halftime. But they were there to watch - make no mistake.

A'ja hustles to get in position

I can't say the Aces looked great.  But who knows what was going on with pre-season play.  

The final score was something like 102 to 84, favoring Dallas, who did look good.  It seems the Wings ownership is getting serious and assembled a real team with a real coach.

But if I was on the Aces, I'd be nervous about what Becky Hammon is thinking right now.

Anyway - a good night out!  Thanks to CB, JAL and Co. for a great time!