Down by one with 8.5 seconds left, Bridget Carleton inbounded the ball to Napheesa Collier, who took a couple of dribbles, stopped with two defenders near her and kicked the ball back out to Carleton.

From 34 feet away, her 3-pointer found nothing but net with 3.4 ticks left, and the Minnesota Lynx beat Connecticut 78-76 Tuesday night in Uncasville, Conn., and locked up the second seed for the WNBA playoffs that begin Sunday.

“There’s so much joy and so exciting. It was a really deep shot, so it was really fun. It was stressful,” said Collier, who led Minnesota with 25 points.

And it was the final basket in a game that featured eight lead changes in the final 2:25 and four in the final 22.9 seconds.

“It’s kind of the epitome of the season for her like she just kind of deserves something like that to happen to her. Really special,” said coach Cheryl Reeve.

A candidate for the league’s most improved player, Carleton has transitioned from a bench player to starting all but four games. Wont to pass up good shots in prior seasons, she has gone from scoring 3.2 points in 15.1 minutes per game in 2023 to 9.7 points in almost 30 minutes per game this season.

Carleton, who finished with 13 points, is knocking down 44.7% of her 3-point shots, making 13 of 20 in her past four games, including three of four Tuesday. She was not made available for the postgame Zoom.

“BC works so hard for us, she does everything we ask every single night. She’s also one of the best people you’ll ever meet,” Collier said. “She just said it was her first game winner, which is really exciting. Such a great teammate, person, ball player. So to have her win the game for us in such a way like this, it’s an amazing feeling we all have for her.”

Minnesota (30-9) has won seven straight and 13 of 14 since the Olympic break. And it was the second on the road over a top-three team in three days after winning 88-79 on Sunday at New York (32-7).

Finishing in the top two guarantees home-court advantage for the first two rounds of playoff action. The Lynx are 16-3 at Target Center this season.

And finishing second means facing Phoenix — 3-7 in its last 10 entering Tuesday — in the best-of-three first round. The Lynx are 3-1 against the Mercury this season.

“Staying connected has been a testament to why we are where we are right now, problem solving together, never anybody pointing fingers,” said Kayla McBride. “That becomes a lot of fun, because then you’re just competing your (rears) off for 40 minutes and hopefully you end up on top. That’s what we’re doing, and we’re having a lot of fun doing it.”

The Lynx finish the regular season at home Thursday against seven-win Los Angeles.

“It’s safe to say we’re certainly not going to run these guys into the ground,” Reeve said of the starters.

The Lynx led by 12 late in the third quarter, and a 3-point play by Alanna Smith gave Minnesota a 69-62 lead with 4:01 left. But Connecticut scored 12 of the next 16 points and led 74-73 with 22.9 seconds to play.

Collier hit a fadeaway with 12.8 seconds left to put the Lynx back up by one, but a cutting layup by DeWanna Bonner four seconds later gave the Sun (27-12) a one-point lead. Then came a Minnesota time out that led to a fantastic finish.

McBride scored 14 points and had seven rebounds. Courtney Williams had eight points and dished out a season-high 12 assists.

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Letters: Tax, tax, tax, spend, spend, spend, year after year

CLEVELAND — In a quiet clubhouse, after a loss on Monday that was difficult to digest, reliever Griffin Jax stood in front of reporters after he had given up a go-ahead home run in the eighth inning and called it “heartbreaking.”

Jax had come in an inning earlier to clean up a bases-loaded jam and had done so, successfully. An inning later, the Twins’ lead was gone.

Tuesday, the Twins’ top reliever had another chance, and boy did he respond, coming in with a pair of runners on base and successfully navigating around that to seal up a 4-1 win for the Twins over the Guardians at Progressive Field.

The Twins were seemingly trying to stay away from Jax, going to Ronny Henriquez for the seventh inning — perhaps the most high-leverage inning of his career — before turning for Jhoan Duran for what they seemed to hope would be a two-inning save.

But Duran, after a clean eighth inning, allowed a leadoff double in the ninth and then, after a strikeout, walked a batter, spelling the end of his night. The Guardians ended up loading the bases on a softly-hit ball to shortstop Brooks Lee that he bobbled. But with the go-ahead run at the plate, Jax got the groundout he needed, fielding the final out and taking it to first base himself.

At this point of the Twins’ season, with such a slim margin for error, it seems as if every game is a must-win. And while runs haven’t come easy in recent weeks, the Twins did enough on Tuesday to pull away from Cleveland.

Matt Wallner, who came into the game 0 for 17 in recent days, snapped out of that skid with a two-out RBI hit in the third inning to give the Twins a lead. After the Guardians tied it up with a Lane Thomas home run off of starter Zebby Matthews, Wallner came through with yet another two-out hit in the fifth inning to give the Twins the lead back for good.

All four of the Twins’ runs on Tuesday scored with two outs as Willi Castro, who had not collected an extra-base hit since August, picked the perfect time to hit his first of the month. a two-run homerun that gave the Twins an important cushion.

Shortstop Brooks Lee #72 of the Minnesota Twins turns a double play over Bo Naylor #23 of the Cleveland Guardians at second base in the fifth inning at Progressive Field on Sept. 17, 2024 in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images)
Closer Griffin Jax #22 and Willi Castro #50 of the Minnesota Twins celebrate a 4-1 win over the Cleveland Guardians at Progressive Field on Sept. 17, 2024 in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images)

Starting in fall 2025, listed tuition for all new and continuing undergraduate Bethel University students will decrease from $44,050 to $25,990, part of an effort to cut sticker prices to provide more transparency on cost, according to university officials.

The cut will apply to students in the College of Arts and Sciences, the university’s undergraduate college. Scholarships and federal financial aid will be available for additional support, according to the university in Arden Hills.

The cut is possible, when it might not have been in previous years, as the university has reduced investments in some programs and increased it in others that are growing in order to support enrollment volume, said Joel Costa, Bethel University chief financial officer and vice president of operations.

Those investments have largely been in the university’s healthcare and mental health-related programs, according to Paul McGinnis, Bethel University vice president of marketing and enrollment.

“We are coming at this in a position of financial strength for the university after having realigned our expense base with our enrollment realities over the last couple of years,” Costa said.

With the listed tuition decrease, students’ financial assistance packages will be revised, but no current students will see their total cost for the 2025 to 2026 academic year exceed what it would have been before the change, according to the university.

Communication goes out to students

Current students have received a letter or email from the university going over what their financial aid would have been before the tuition change and what it is now, McGinnis said.

“And instead of creating those feel-good discounts, we’re going to just say, you know what? We’re not going to do that. We’re just going to say what our tuition is,” he said.

Decades ago, sticker prices and net prices for universities and colleges were much closer together, McGinnis said. The model of having a higher sticker price was well-intentioned, he said, having students that could afford to pay more do so and then using that additional revenue to support low-income students through scholarships.

However, though net prices for private colleges have stayed relatively flat for the last 15 years, sticker prices have gone up astronomically, McGinnis said.

Many students, especially first-generation students and those from underrepresented backgrounds, aren’t aware of that difference between sticker and net price and will not even consider private colleges as a result, McGinnis added.

From fall 2022 to fall 2023, Bethel University’s undergraduate enrollment numbers grew 1.4%, but fell 5% from fall 2020 to fall 2023 and have not yet gotten back to pre-pandemic levels, according to McGinnis. Student numbers did grow in all of the university’s four schools by 3% from fall 2022 to fall 2023.

Other private schools

Concordia University in St. Paul, which slashed its tuition by a third for the 2013 academic school year, has grown its enrollment numbers since making the cut.

Tuition at that time went from $29,700 per year to $19,700 per year. In the fall of 2012, Concordia enrolled 1,200 undergraduates. In the fall of 2023, that number was at 1,723 and the university expects another record for fall 2024 enrollment numbers, according to Joe Thornton, communications representative for Concordia University.

Concordia’s undergraduate tuition for the 2024 to 2025 academic year of $25,600 also remains lower than the university’s tuition price had been before the 2013 cut.

It’s one thing to do a tuition reset and another to maintain it, said Eric LaMott, Concordia University provost and chief operating officer.

“That administrative discipline to focus on the net revenues ongoing and not to jump to try to increase tuition too fast, or ways that limit the student enrollment, that’s an area we often see schools that start this and then end off failing because they don’t maintain discipline, and really aren’t keeping the students at the center of their decision making,” LaMott said.

The University of St. Thomas uses a traditional tuition pricing model with an emphasis on scholarships that help make tuition as affordable as possible for students and their families, according to university officials. While the publicly-listed tuition price is $52,820 per year, it’s important to note that 100 percent of first year students are offered a four-year St. Thomas Scholarship, upward of $25,000 annually.

Meanwhile, tuition at Macalester College and fees for full-time undergraduates in the academic year 2022 to 2023 was $62,500, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But the average net price for full-time undergraduates for that year was $38,571.

A different list price

Some university leaders may believe an institution could appear less prestigious with a lower tuition sticker price. And, students may see smaller scholarships as not recognizing their work. However, that’s not necessarily reflective of the university’s overall value, said Bethel University President Ross Allen.

With the cut Bethel is making, the university is going to go against some norms and demonstrate its value and emphasize clarity, Allen said.

“We are going to continue to have the same value, the same quality, the same program that we’ve had. It’s just at a different list price,” Allen said.

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