The WNBA came out of the FIBA World Cup break and immediately started rewriting its own record book. Jackie Young tied the league record for points in a single quarter, dropping 22 in the first period on the way to 35 in a Las Vegas rout of Seattle. Rhyne Howard set the WNBA single-game record for three-pointers in Atlanta's blowout of Connecticut. These are the WNBA post-break records that will still be on the wall in October.
Twenty two in a quarter is not a hot stretch. That is a quarter where the shot chart stops meaning anything and the other bench starts looking at each other. Young has always been the Aces player who takes whatever the defense refuses to guard, and coming off a layoff, with legs fresh and rhythm nowhere near guaranteed, she produced the single most efficient ten minutes anyone has produced in this league. The full 35 was almost an afterthought.
Howard's night was the other kind of record, the one that builds. I do not have her final make count in front of me, but she passed the mark, and she did it in a game Atlanta never sweated. Howard has been a volume shooter since she came into the league, the sort of player who makes coaches wince on the misses and stand up on the makes. Friday nights like that one are why nobody ever asks her to stop.
The layoff is the part I find interesting. Two weeks of no games, players scattered across a World Cup, and the league returns to two individual performances that will be cited for years. Some players come off a break rusty. Some come off it rested.
checked the almanac: the single-game scoring record in this league still belongs to liz cambage, 53 points in 2018. nobody has touched it in eight seasons. records in the w tend to sit a long while, then fall in a rush.
One more thing worth flagging from the same day: the inaugural Upshot League has tipped off, giving former HBCU stars and international players a real stage in front of professional scouts. A league this deep and this roster-tight needs more visible pathways, and that is a genuinely good piece of news underneath the fireworks.
Atlanta is back in action Saturday night at home against Chicago. I want to see whether Howard's stroke traveled and whether the Dream's post-break form is a heater or a level.
