Napheesa Collier scored 28 points, including four clutch free throws late in the final minute, and the Minnesota Lynx held off the Dallas Wings 85-81 on Wednesday.

Courtney Williams and Alanna Smith each added 13 points in front of a home opener crowd of 12,772 after the Lynx beat Dallas 99-84 in the opener for both teams on Friday.

For the third straight game, Minnesota (3-0) had 27 assists. Just one Minnesota basket did not come with a helper. The Lynx shot 47.5% from the field after combining for 50.4% in its first two wins.

Arike Ogunbowale led 0-3 Dallas with 21 points. Paige Bueckers, the former Hopkins High School standout and top pick in this year’s WNBA Draft, had 12 on 3-of-11 shooting.

Routinely up by eight or nine points in the second and third quarters, the Lynx could not put away the Wings.

Minnesota led by a game-high 11 points, 63-52, with less than three minutes to play in the third quarter, but Dallas cut the lead to 76-73 on a 3-pointers by Ogunbowale and DiJonai Carrington with 3:41 left in the fourth.

Minnesota missed six of its first eight shots and four of its first six free throws in the frame.

But Williams made a long jumper, Smith had a block, Williams added a pair of free throws, and Natisha Hiedeman one for an 81-73 Lynx lead with 1:32 left.

A 3-point play by Myisha Hines-Allen got the Wings within five. The Lynx committed a 5-second violation on the inbounds play, and Hines-Allen made two free throws with 1:15 left.

Minnesota committed 19 turnovers.

Collier pushed the lead back to five with a couple free throws, but a 3 from Ogunbowale made it a two-point game with 39 seconds left.

Williams grabbed an offensive rebound, Collier made two free throws with 17.5 seconds left and the Lynx could exhale.

Down 15-5 early, coach Cheryl Reeve called the first Lynx timeout. Perhaps a well-timed wake-up call because the Lynx took over at both ends of the court, outscoring the Wings 16-3 over the final six minutes of the quarter for a 21-18 lead. Dallas made six of its first seven shots, but only one of its next 12.

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The home opener for the Lynx on Wednesday night at Target Center was briefly overshadowed by a homecoming for Minnesota native Paige Bueckers.

She garnered a very loud cheer during player introductions for the Dallas Wings before the Lynx ran out of the tunnel.

It was the realization of a lifelong dream for Bueckers, the former star for Hopkins High School, who took her talents to the University of Connecticut before eventually being selected by the Wings with the No. 1 pick in the 2025 WNBA draft.

Not that anybody is surprised that Buckers made it to the highest level.

It was pretty clear from a young age that she was destined for greatness.

Here are some stories from those that got to see Bueckers up close and personal during her rise up the ranks.

‘She was like a child prodigy’

Maybe the most viral story about Bueckers to date came courtesy of KARE 11 photojournalist Gary Knox. His daughter Evelyn was playing varsity for Hopkins when he attended an open gym on Sept. 24, 2013.

“I remember a few of the parents came up to me asking if I had seen the sixth grader tearing it up,” Knox said. “I walked over to the other court and she like was a child prodigy out there. It was like a little kid playing Mozart on the piano. You’re like, ‘They shouldn’t be playing this well.’”

That was the first time Knox had ever seen Bueckers. He noticed how dominate she was despite being among the smallest players on the floor. She made up for her lack of size and strength with her skill and swagger.

“She was a few steps ahead of everybody else,” Knox said. “She was just different.”

It was enough that Knox wanted to document it. He ran a website on the side highlighting different girls basketball players across Minnesota and figured people might want to know about this rising star.

“I went up to her dad and asked permission to tweet about her,” Knox said. “The rest is history.”

The tweet proved to be prophetic, as Knox told people to remember the name, going as far as comparing Bueckers to the GOAT Diana Taurasi.

It has been retweeted more than 10,000 times, going viral a number of times when Bueckers was playing at UConn, then again last month before she was selected by the Wings with the No. 1 pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft.

‘She set the standard for everybody else’

Not many people on the planet have spent more time with Bueckers than her longtime AAU coach Tara Starks. They started working together for the first time when Bueckers was 10 years old and they have remained in each other’s lives ever since.

“You could tell right away she was special,” Starks said. “It actually took me a little bit to realize she was playing up for her age. She was younger than all the kids she was playing against. That made it that much more impressive when I realized that.”

Most kids that age are singularly focused with getting to the basket. That wasn’t the case for Bueckers. Not in the slightest.

“She was so unselfish,” Starks said. “She liked to pass the ball. She had the ability to get anywhere on the court and get her teammates good looks. She did a lot that kids at that age don’t normally do.”

That unselfishness has served as a compass for Bueckers as she has continued to progress throughout her career. Though she could dominate the game with her scoring, she always took an immense amount of pride in getting her teammates involved.

Asked about some of the other character traits that stood out, Starks pointed to how committed Bueckers is to her craft.

“We would have open gym at 6 p.m.,” Starks said. “I would pick her up from Lifetime Fitness around the corner from her house, then, if we got done early enough, I would drop her back off and she would keep working.”

That commitment from Bueckers has left a lasting impact that has continued long after she has moved on.

“She created this mentality,” Starks said. “You’ve seen a lot of kids around here, like, ‘I want to be better than Paige.’ They are putting in a lot of hours because that’s what she used to do. She set the standard for everybody else.”

‘She’s so good for the game’

The first time that former Wayzata girls basketball coach Mike Schumacher scouted Bueckers still sticks out to him more than a decade later. She was playing varsity as an eighth grader for Hopkins at the time and he knew he was going to have his hands full for the foreseeable future.

“She was coming off the bench and I was sitting next to another coach and I said, ‘They are better when Paige is on the floor,’” Schumacher said. “She was the driving force for them even at that age and everybody knew it.”

The game plan anytime Wayzata played Hopkins started and stopped with Bueckers.

“We had to figure out what we wanted to take away,” Schumacher said. “If we didn’t worry about her scoring, she would kill us by herself. If we worried too much about her scoring, she would kill us by getting the ball to her teammates.”

As talented as Wayzata was in the mid to late 2010s, it never made the state tournament because, well, Bueckers always made sure Hopkins won the section championship.

“I became a fan of hers once she got to UConn,” Schumacher said with a laugh. “It took a little bit of time. She’s so good for the game. She always has been.”

‘She was something special’

As he went down memory lane this week, Hopkins girls basketball coach Brian Cosgriff admitted Bueckers was good enough to play varsity as a seventh grader. She instead played junior varsity and led that group to an undefeated record.

The following year Bueckers played varsity an eighth grader and immediately made her presence felt.

“I remember we were playing Elk River pretty early on and she came off the bench and hit like eight 3-pointers,” Cosgriff said. “That’s when I knew she was something special.”

As she continued to develop her game, Cosgriff actually had to convince Bueckers to be more selfish at times.

“She loves her teammates more than anything,” Cosgriff said. “If I ever had to yell at her, it was because she didn’t shoot enough.”

After winning a state championship as a junior, Bueckers was in position to win in another state championship as a senior. She never got the chance. On the eve of the state championship game between Hopkins and Farmington, the Minnesota State High School League cancelled all activities in response to COVID-19.

“We weren’t going to lose that game,” Cosgriff said. “I know Paige well enough to know she wasn’t going to let us lose that game.”

As much success as they experienced together, there’s a particular moment that stands out to Cosgriff when he thinks about Bueckers and her journey to get to this point. He remembers when she was a senior, she got invited to a Timberwolves game. She was honored during a break in the action.

“I thought to myself, ‘How cool would it be to see her play against the Lynx on this floor?’” Cosgriff said. “Sure enough, she made it happen, and I couldn’t be more proud of her.”

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Lawmakers continued trying to piece together Minnesota’s next two-year budget on Wednesday, though details of the process remained largely behind closed doors.

Only one bill that’s part of the $66 billion budget framework deal is getting public hearings so far: taxes. Other meetings on the dozen or so bills legislators need to pass aren’t publicly posted or open to the public.

Since lawmakers didn’t finish a budget by the May 19 deadline, they’re meeting in “working groups” to get bills in shape before returning for a special session to pass a budget.

Major areas of the budget, like the K-12 education and health bills that account for about two-thirds of state spending, are still incomplete. Transportation and higher education also still need work.

‘Working groups’ leave public in the dark

Leaders say they hope a special session could happen as soon as the end of the week, or possibly following the Memorial Day weekend.

Members of the House tied between Republican and Democratic-Farmer-Labor members and the one-seat DFL-majority Senate are working on remaining bills in private discussions to hash out final details before Gov. Tim Walz calls them back to the Capitol.

Since they aren’t in session, they are instead meeting for working groups rather than as full-fledged committees. Much like the overarching budget negotiations between the governor and legislative leaders earlier this month, the public is in the dark about what’s happening during these discussions.

When it comes to the groups currently developing budget bills, Matt Ehling, a board member with Minnesotans for Open Government, said putting key decisions behind closed doors can obscure who or what influenced decisions.

“Having more access to the process would allow the public to see what legislators are weighing and what they’re not weighing,” he said. “The rationale is often as important as the outcome.”

Ehling said it’s during this part of the process where the public loses sight of how state leaders make decisions. There may have been public hearings on many bills in the past few months, but now the leaders go underground and emerge with a deal which they then sign off on with limited discussion in a public committee.

“They basically have created a situation where they block out the public from being able to weigh in on these issues,” said Hamline University political science professor David Schultz. “These are working groups. They’re not official. It’s just a way of avoiding transparency and avoiding accountability.”

Budget ‘deal’

There also isn’t any publicly available document with complete details on the deal between Walz and legislative leaders. Most of the information has come in the form of statements from officials. And the information hasn’t always been complete.

For example, Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth made it seem like cuts to state aid for private schools are off the table, while House DFL leader Melissa Hortman has told reporters that they remain subject to negotiations.

A cut to the state family and medical leave payroll tax touted by Demuth as part of the deal turned out to be a decrease to a cap on the maximum rate.

Meanwhile, lawmakers working on the taxes bill weren’t in complete agreement Tuesday about how the agreement would shape their decision-making. Sen. Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope, said they’d seek further guidance from leaders on how to proceed.

Schultz said leaving the details of the global budget agreement externally vague serves a useful purpose for legislators who will have to make difficult compromises.

He called the budget agreement announced by the governor, Senate DFL Majority Leader Erin Murphy and leaders in the 67-67 tied House last Thursday more of a “framework” than a “deal.”

“By keeping it so general, it … gives each side an ability to spin the deal in a way that most favors them,” he said. “If you put too much detail into it, you might not be able to sell the deal to either the rest of your members of your party, or to your supporters or to the voters.”

Toward compromise

At least for the top-level agreements, Hortman said private meetings between leaders and the governor are the best way to arrive at a compromise before delegating work to different committees. Things didn’t work as well when cameras were in the room during past administrations, she said.

“You need people to be able to say what’s their bottom line and to make their emotional pitch and to say where their caucuses are and say where their votes are,” Hortman told reporters Monday. “People have to really show their cards. So that is a space that has not ever and probably will not ever be transparent.”

Lawmakers and the governor have to finish the budget by June 30 or the state government shuts down. Committee leads had until 5 p.m. Wednesday to finish their work.

Hortman told reporters Monday that she and other leaders could get involved with the process if there weren’t any agreements by that time.

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Minnesota United head coach Eric Ramsay believed Kelvin Yeboah could use a deep breath in order for the striker to overcome his long scoring drought.

“He really does try to turn over every stone to get himself in a good position,” Ramsay said Tuesday. “It’s striking a balance between that and also relaxing a little bit.”

Yeboah wasn’t stressing when he calmly flicked on a Julian Gressel cross in the 10th minute.

The Loons defense didn’t pass its stress test in the second half, falling behind 2-1, but two goals from United left wing back Anthony Markanich saved United in a 3-2 win over St. Louis City in the U.S. Open Cup round of 16 on Wednesday at Allianz Field.

MNUFC beat St. Louis in MLS play on Saturday to send City to its 10th straight match without a win and squashed hopes of ending the skid Wednesday.

The Loons’ draw for its quarterfinal matchups will be Thursday morning.

Markanich scored the equalizer in the 86th minute and the game-winner in the 88th minute. Both were assisted by Joaquin Pereyra.

Markanich has now scored in three of his last four games, including MLS finishes against Inter Miami and Austin.

Yeboah had seen playing time diminish in recent MLS games, but used the national tournament to snap a scoring drought that stretched over eight injury-interrupted matches and more than 560 minutes since his brace in the 2-2 draw with L.A. Galaxy on March 22.

The Loons gave up that lead within 10 minutes of the second half.

After an initial save from Wessel Speel, St. Louis sent an ensuing cross to a wide-open Marcel Hartel in the 6-yard box. He easily converted the equalizer in the 56th minute without a Loons center back challenging him. Speel raised his arms in the air, with little he could do.

Nine minutes later, Joao Klauss beat Loons center back Morris Duggan for a header goal at the back post.

The Loons made two halftime changes at center back, taking off Carlos Harvey and Nico Romero and bringing in Michael Boxall and DJ Taylor.

MNUFC made two attacking changes — Robin Lod and Pereyra — in the 64th minute. The sub moved Sang Bin Jeong to right wing back and he was beat on the cross that led St. Louis’ go-ahead goal.