The Phoenix Mercury were down 79-77 to the eighth-seeded New York Liberty as they approached the final minute of their do-or-die game Thursday night. In front of a roaring home crowd, Sophie Cunningham decided to do what she’d been doing all game and fired a 3-point shot, this time from the right side of the court, and sunk the most important basket of her life.

It marked a career-high 21 points for Cunningham and gave the Mercury the lead they needed to advance to the second round of the WNBA playoffs. The 25-year-old came off the bench to go 6-for-7 from the 3-point line and ignite her team in the second half.

Sophie Cunningham? More like Sophie Going Ham.

Her efforts, alongside Skylar Diggins-Smith’s 22 points and Brittney Griner’s 16 points and 10 rebounds, led the Mercury to a thrilling 83-82 win in the first-round, single-elimination game.

🚨 WE GOT OURSELVES A BALL GAME 🚨@sophaller knocks down ANOTHER clutch three 🤑

📺 ESPN2 pic.twitter.com/ym0RizEfM7

— WNBA (@WNBA) September 24, 2021

Mercury coach Sandy Brondello subbed Cunningham into the game in the second half to give the team a spark. The Mercury had let the Liberty close in on their 11-point lead and entered halftime down 41-37. Players began to lose momentum as New York outshot Phoenix 18-13 at the start of the second quarter; Diggins-Smith didn’t score a single point in that span.

“Sophie’s got a short-term memory,” Brondello said with a chuckle after the game. “That’s what I love about her, and she’s not afraid.”

The original plan when Cunningham subbed in was to get the ball to Diggins-Smith and Griner.

“I just went out there and I said, ‘Screw it, I’m just going to shoot the ball,’” she said.

The Columbia, Mo. native mentioned during a sideline interview after the third quarter that bringing energy is her role on the team, and so that’s what she did Thursday night, in whatever form the team needed it.

Typically playing between 16 and 24 minutes a game, Cunningham came into the game as an underdog.

The guard’s previous career-high was 19 points, achieved on June 28, 2019 in a game against the Indiana Fever when she went 3-for-3 from 3-point range. Her season-high was 17 points against the Atlanta Dream on Aug. 15.

On Thursday night, Cunningham scored 12 points in the third quarter alone, followed by another six in the fourth.

“On the stage that we had, it’s not easy coming in and playing,” Brondello said.

It wasn’t just 3-point shooting that Cunningham brought off the bench. She bounced around with a crowd-hyping energy and confidence that had everyone convinced she owned the court. By the final 10 minutes, her teammates were matching her pace, with Griner recording 14 points and Diggins-Smith 12 in the final stanza.

The only thing missing from Cunningham’s picture-perfect night was teammate Diana Taurasi, Cunningham’s favorite player growing up and now her teammate. Taurasi sat out of Thursday’s game with a left ankle sprain.

The Mercury will next face the Seattle Storm, who advanced to the second round on a bye, at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday.

"Woo" indeed @sophaller! 👏👏👏 pic.twitter.com/p994YaBxxN

— Phoenix Mercury - X (@PhoenixMercury) September 24, 2021

25-year-old American pro golfer Nelly Korda secured her spot in LPGA history on Sunday, notching her fifth-straight title at this weekend's Chevron Championship in The Woodlands, Texas.

Ranked No. 1 in the world by Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings, Korda joins Nancy Lopez (1978) and Annika Sörenstam (2005) as just the third LPGA player to rack up five consecutive tour wins. She is also the third No. 1-ranked player to capture The Chevron Championship victory since the rankings debuted in 2006, accompanied by Lorena Ochoa and Lydia Ko.

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The Florida native shot three-under 69 in Sunday's final, besting Sweden's Maja Stark despite Stark's valiant come-from-behind attempt in the 18th. Korda finished with a four-day total of 13-under 275, celebrating her two-stroke win by cannonballing into Poppie's Pond, much to the crowd's delight. She left The Club at Carlton Woods with $1.2 million from an overall purse of $7.9 million.

It wasn't long ago that the two-time major champion's current winning streak seemed unimaginable. After maintaining her No. 1 position for 29 weeks, Korda underwent surgery to remove a blood clot from her left arm in 2022. She returned to the course not long after, but failed to win a single tournament in 2023 before seeing a surge in form during the first four months of 2024. As of today, she hasn't lost a tournament since January.

Korda will attempt a record sixth-straight win at next week's JM Eagle LA Championship at Wilshire Country Club in Los Angeles, where she'll vie for a cut of the $3.75 million purse.

USWNT regulars Sophia Smith and Mallory Swanson furthered their cases for Olympic inclusion with their respective club victories on Saturday and Sunday.

After a roller coaster of a week that saw former Thorns head coach Mike Norris reassigned and a flurry of last-minute roster reshufflings as Friday's trade window closure loomed, the NWSL sprung to life over the weekend with standout performances from ninth-place Portland and third-place Chicago, among others.

After her blocked attempt at goal set up a volleying sixth-minute opener from veteran Christine Sinclair — now the only player in history to record a goal in all 11 NWSL seasons — Smith swiftly netted her own in the 27th minute off a breakaway run that eluded Houston's backline. The goal represented Smith's third of the season as well as her 35th for the Thorns, ultimately leading to the home side's first win of the season in a 4-1 routing of the Dash.

But that wasn't Smith's only stat of the evening. The star forward also lapped former Chicago Red Star Sam Kerr to become the youngest player to reach 50 NWSL goal contributions across all games, chalking up 40 goals and 10 assists at the age of 23 years and 254 days.

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"Obviously it feels good to get a win," said Smith in a post-match press conference. "But this is the standard the Thorns have always had. So a win is great, but a win is the expectation — we're hungrier than ever after the way we started."

170 miles up the road, Lumen Field similarly showcased some promising Olympic prospect footwork on Sunday. In Chicago's 2-1 victory over the lagging 13th-place Seattle Reign, striker Mallory Swanson racked up an impressive counterattack assist on fellow forward Ally Schlegel's fourth-minute goal. Swanson went on to find the back of the net herself before halftime, lacing an explosive ball into the top corner in the 31st minute, her second of the season after returning from a lengthy sidelining injury.

Speaking of injuries, fellow USWNT favorites Alex Morgan and Tierna Davidson were not as fortunate as their national squad teammates this weekend. Each exited their club matches early, Morgan with an ankle knock in San Diego's loss to Orlando and Davidson with an apparent hamstring incident early on in Washington's win over Gotham.

LSU came out on top at the 2024 NCAA women's gymnastics championship in Fort Worth on Saturday, besting Cal, Utah, and Florida to capture their first-ever title.

The Tigers' win was far from a landslide. LSU took the first rotation handily thanks to 2024 All-Around winner Haleigh Bryant's team-leading 9.9375 backed by four additional 9.9+ scores from her teammates. But Utah then responded with three strong beam performances of their own, causing the Red Rocks to slide confidently into second place by the end of the second rotation.

By the halfway point, all four teams fell within .288 points of one another before Utah overtook the pack with a dominant floor showing after three rotations. LSU then went on to ace the beam event with Konnor McClain's meet-leading 9.9625 score, coming away with the highest collective score ever awarded to the event in NCAA championship history. The achievement propelled the Tigers to victory, ensuring them the title after the final rotation.

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"This team is full of individuals that have incredible character and integrity and love for each other and all the things you hear from coaches when they sit at a podium like this in a moment of victory, but I promise you it's a real thing," said LSU coach Jay Clark in a post-meet press conference. "I'm just so happy for them."

Contributing to Saturday's atmosphere of excitement was the absence of last year's champion and this year's heavily favored Oklahoma Sooners. Hot off earning the highest team score in NCAA history just last month, the top-ranked Norman squad suffered a shocking loss in the semifinals, where five major mistakes contributed to a third-place finish and a season-low team score of 196.6625.

With Oklahoma out, it was truly anyone's game.

"Every team was out there fighting for their lives — all four teams, it could have gone any of four ways out there," Clark told reporters. "As much as I feel for what happened to Oklahoma in the semifinals, I think it made for a championship that became so packed with emotion because every team out there believed they could do it. It was just tremendous."

LSU is now the eighth program in the sport's history to earn an NCAA women's gymnastic championship.
They share the honor with Georgia, Utah, UCLA, Oklahoma, Alabama, Florida, and Michigan.

Cameron Brink already has her rookie of the year pick for the upcoming WNBA season, and it’s Indiana-bound star Caitlin Clark. 

In the latest edition of Kelley on the Street, host Kelley O'Hara caught up with Brink in New York hours before the Stanford phenom went No. 2 overall to the Los Angeles Sparks at the 2024 WNBA Draft. When O’Hara asked who would win the WNBA's rookie of the year, she answered without pause.

"Caitlin Clark," she said, while a fan commented that she thought Brink would take home the award. Brink later added that the extra foul granted to WNBA players will be "good for me."

"I hope it’s me," Charisma Osborne, who was later drafted by the Phoenix Mercury, said when asked her ROY prediction. "But, I don’t know — we’ll see."

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