The Minnesota Lynx fell to the Connecticut Sun 78-73 at Target Center on Thursday night, taking a loss in consecutive games for the first time this season.

Alanna Smith led the way for the Lynx with 14 points, followed by Kayla McBride’s 13 points, eight rebounds and four assists. Courtney Williams and Bridget Carleton each had 12 points.

Minnesota’s Napheesa Collier finished with nine points and six rebounds in 25 minutes before exiting the game with a left foot injury. Olivia Époupa also left the game with a left thigh injury.

“Win the next one,” coach Cheryl Reeve said of her message to the team postgame. “Flush it, move on, win the next one. That’s all our focus is.”

DeWanna Bonner had a game-high 24 points for Connecticut, while Alyssa Thomas notched a triple-double with 13 points, 14 assists and 10-rebounds.

The Sun dominated early, jumping out to a 10-2 lead while forcing four Lynx turnovers. Kayla McBride broke Minnesota’s scoring drought but Connecticut pushed the score to 20-9 with three minutes left in the first quarter.

Then came Collier, Époupa, and Dorka Juhász, who combined for all of the Lynx’s eight points, three rebounds, and three steals over the last 2:08 to guide the 8-0 run to end the quarter.

Nearly two scoreless minutes went by to start the second quarter before Connecticut’s Brionna Jones hit one of her two free throws. But a Juhász layup and a Smith 3-pointer gave Minnesota its first lead of the game at 22-21. The Lynx ended the second on an 8-2 run capped off by Williams’ fadeaway shot at the halftime buzzer as Minnesota led 40-36.

“Basketball is a game of runs,” Smith said of the interchanging leads. “If one team goes on a run, the other team also has to withstand the run.”

The Lynx led by double digits early in the second half but made multiple mistakes on both ends while going on a 4:00 scoring drought. That, along with DiJonai Carrington’s consecutive made 3s, allowed the Sun to even the game at 48-all.

Thomas took over for the Suns, scoring nine points herself to lead the 16-5 run for a 64-58 lead heading into the fourth quarter.

Collier exited the game towards the end of the third and did not return.

“That’s an MVP caliber player, of course we’d rather have her on the court with us,” McBride said of Collier’s exit. “Just her dominance and presence on both ends of the floor. … I think we needed her at that moment in the third quarter.”

Minnesota tied the game during the fourth before Bonner hit a 3 off Thomas’ 11th assist.

“You can’t [contain her passing],” Reeve said of Thomas’ impact on the game. “She’s smart, she knows how to get assists. She knows where the ball needs to go. You can take it up and you can pressure her and she’ll beat you in a different way.”

After losing back-to-back games for the first time this season, and three of four overall, Reeve and Minnesota look to increase the physicality going into Saturday’s game against the Washington Mystics.

“I think we’ll learn from that, you know, two games where we couldn’t respond to a team’s physicality,” Reeve said. “There’s not any sort of magic thing you could do, just get a little tougher.”

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Within a six-day span starting on June 28, the Saints lost utility man Will Holland to a fractured fibula, utility man Tony Kemp was released and starting shortstop Brooks Lee was called up to the Twins.

All that on the heels of losing infielder Michael Helman to a left hamstring strain on June 17.

In short, manager Toby Gardenhire has been woefully short of available players in recent games, with four losses in the past six games leading up to Thursday night’s game against the Gwinnett Stripers at CHS Field being the result of going short-handed.

“We went through a couple weeks where we had a healthy team — and we won,” Gardenhire said, referring to a recent 11-game winning streak. “But it didn’t last very long. We’re pretty shorthanded right now and we’re just trying to get through it.”

Reinforcements arrived on Thursday.

Second baseman Payton Eeles, who was signed as a minor league free agent on May 7, was called up from High Class-A Cedar Rapids. Relief pitchers Matt Bowman and Diego Castillo also rejoined the team after signing minor-league contracts.

Gardenhire said a team needs at least 12 position players to play at the optimal level. The addition of Eeles gives the Saints 11. Five starting pitchers is ideal, but that would be
considered a luxury for the Saints at this point.

“We’ve had four the last couple weeks and that cuts it pretty thin,” Gardenhire said. “So you have bullpen games. We’ve done a good job with them, because we have a good bullpen. But we’ve had there weeks in a row with bullpen games, so guys start to wear down a little bit. All of a sudden your bullpen isn’t as good as it was before.”

Gardernhire said he’s on the phone with Twins director of player development Drew MacPhail on a daily basis discussing the personnel wants and needs at the various levels of the organization. The needs of the Twins obviously take precedent, but it is becoming increasing difficult to fill in behind players called up to the major leagues.

“The tough thing we have right now is that every level is kind of short-handed,” Gardenhire said. “We’ve had a lot of injuries. A lot of different stuff has happened, to where everyone is kind of searching.”

The 24-year-old Eeles, who played collegiately at Coastal Carolina, started at second base Thursday night and got an infield single in his first at-bat. The Saints are the fourth team he has played for this season, having started the season playing for an independent team in Maryland.

“I’ve worn a lot of uniforms this year already,” he said. “It’s been a crazy two-and-a-half months.”

Thursday was another crazy night for Saints starter Louie Varland. He struggled in the first inning, throwing 42 pitches before Gardenhire made the unusual move of sending Varland out to left field with two outs and the bases loaded and having left fielder Chris Williams come in to pitch.

Williams got the last out of the inning, keeping the Saints’ deficit at 1-0.

Gardenhire sent Varland back to the mound for the top of the second, but, much to his displeasure, the umpires determined that Williams had to face a minimum of three batters
because he didn’t leave the game.

Williams surrendered a walk and a single before Varland returned to the mound. Varland gave up a three-run home run on the first pitch he threw.

The pitching moves also cost the Saints their designated hitter. Varland, hitting seventh in the order, struck out without swinging the bat in the second inning. Varland left the game after
pitching a scoreless third inning.

The Stripers scored six runs in the fourth inning off of Saints reliever Nick Wittgren in the fourth inning. They took a 10-0 lead into the top of the sixth inning and the game was not finished at press time.

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Royce Lewis is so desperate, so eager to stay on the field, that the Twins’ third baseman is willing to try anything that might help.

Anything.

“If someone said, ‘Hey, if you smoke cigarettes like Babe Ruth and that’ll work,’ then I’ll do that too,” Lewis joked. “I’ll do whatever. I’m open to anything.”

Just a day earlier, Lewis received news that he had suffered a Grade 2 strain in his right adductor, an injury that happened as he was running the bases on Tuesday night.

Lewis is expected to be out at least through the all-star break, at which point the Twins will reassess his injury. He said he first felt some tightness in his adductor during the Twins’ trip to Oakland about 10 days ago and he communicated it with the staff, but it was something he was able to manage.

It worsened Tuesday.

The injury, he was told, stems in part from the first injury he had this year — a severe quad strain that cost him the first two months of the season.

“What I was told, it’s a lot of compensation for the lack of strength I have in my quad because of that injury,” Lewis said. “Not that we rushed back. It’s just that it takes eight months of time and if someone is ready — I mean clearly I was able to perform at a high level. … But because there is a deficit there, the adductor kind of overcompensated.”

It’s the latest in a long line of injuries for Lewis and he said it’s particularly frustrating for him because of all the work he puts in to get himself ready for games.

“I’m getting here six hours before the game, five or six hours before the game, home and road, being away from family, taking time away from communicating with family or friends and basically not living a life to eventually just get hurt,” he said.

He has twice torn the ACL in his knee, requiring a surgery that took a year to rehab and return each time. Last year, he also dealt with oblique and hamstring injuries. This year, it’s been his quad and adductor.

This one, at the very least, is not as severe as some of his past injuries and the Twins have said they believe he will not miss as much time as he missed with the quad strain (58 games).

“We’re running out of muscles to get broken or whatever, so this is all good,” Lewis said. “Hopefully I’ll cross off the next one and be done.”

Aronson gets call up

Sean Aronson, the longtime voice of the St. Paul Saints, will make his major league debut on the Twins’ upcoming road trip, filling in for radio broadcaster Kris Atteberry.

Aronson, who has called 1,920 Saints games since the 2007 season, will work the series in Chicago and San Francisco, calling games between July 8-14, with Dan Gladden.

“I’ve dreamt about this moment my entire broadcasting career and to finally get the chance to broadcast major league games is something I won’t soon forget,” Aronson said in a release.

Briefly

Pablo López, Joe Ryan and Simeon Woods Richardson are set to take the mound over the weekend when the Twins welcome the Houston Astros into town. … The Twins will wear their City Connect uniforms on both July 5 and 6.

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