PHOENIX — Suns stars Devin Booker and Kevin Durant showed up in Game 4 on Friday in Phoenix, clearly determined to not get swept.

Booker poured in 49 points on 13 for 21 shooting. Durant had 33 points, nine rebounds and five assists. The Suns’ best players brought their best effort and delivered their best fight of the series.

And yet they were still knocked out by the best player on the floor over the last week. That was Anthony Edwards, who’s been brilliant all week, and saved his best for last.

The result?

The Timberwolves beat Phoenix 122-116 on Sunday to sweep the first-round playoff series in four games.

Edwards was spectacular in every sense Sunday, not only putting the Suns to bed, but tucking them in and reading them a bedtime story. He hit dagger shots, delivered a critical block to deter a Booker layup and threw down a thunderous slam that sent social media ablaze.

Each big play served as another dagger to Phoenix’s season. The decisive blow came with 20 seconds to play, when Edwards ran the length of the floor to put Minnesota up six.

Game, series.

Edwards scored 16 points in the final frame to secure Minnesota’s victory and deliver the team’s first sweep in franchise history. Edwards finished the game with 40 points, nine boards and six assists.

Minnesota advances to the Western Conference semifinals for the second time in franchise history, where it will meet the Lakers or Nuggets. The earliest that series can start is Saturday.

Timberwolves coach Chris Finch was injured in the final two minutes of the game, as Mike Conley crashed into the coach after he was fouled. Finch was down on the floor for awhile after suffering an apparent leg injury and had to be helped off the floor.

That was about the only hiccup for Minnesota down the stretch. The Wolves have struggled with late-game execution all season, sporting one of the worst clutch-time net ratings in the NBA post-Christmas.

But the plan Sunday was clear and and decisive — allow Edwards to control the game. That’s much easier done now that Edwards has grown such a knack for reading defenses and making the proper decisions.

It’s a near lock for Minnesota that, with the ball in Edwards’ hands, the Wolves will either generate an open look for someone or Edwards will impose his will.

The latter was often effective in Game 4. Edwards scored 29 points in the second half to bring Minnesota back from a five-point halftime deficit and close the Suns out.

Minnesota struggled to shoot in the first half. Karl-Anthony Towns hit all three of his 3-point tries over the first two quarters, while the rest of the Wolves went 1 for 17.

Minnesota found its stroke in the third quarter, though. The Wolves went 6 for 9 from deep in the frame in a major show of offensive burst behind Edwards’ excellence.

Still, Phoenix stuck with Minnesota, as the Wolves weren’t as sharp defensively as they’d been in prior contests throughout the series. Booker and Durant finally looked like All-Stars and found their way to the rim more often than Minnesota would’ve liked as Rudy Gobert struggled with foul trouble.

But, in the end, they were out-dueled.

At 22 years old, Anthony Edwards has now won a playoff series, and he’s in search for more.

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North Oaks product Frankie Capan III shot a 3-under 68 in the final round Sunday to finish 24-under on the week — good for fourth in the Veritex Bank Championship in Arlington, Texas.

Tom Widing shot an 8-under 63 on Sunday to get to 31-under and win the event — his second-straight victory — by four strokes.

The finish moves Capan up from 30th to 22nd on the Korn Ferry Tour’s season-long points list. The top 30 on the list at year’s end earn PGA Tour cards.

Capan has now logged three consecutive top-10 finishes.

He led this week’s event after the first round Thursday, when he shot a 13-under 58 to set a new Texas Rangers Golf Club course record, besting the previous record of 59 set by Scottie Scheffler.

Capan was in solo second, two back of Widing entering Sunday’s final round. He carded a 3-under 32 on the front-nine Sunday before sputtering a bit on his final nine.

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Before Christina Bogojevic joined the Minnesota State Patrol, the Hayfield native tried her hand at jobs that never seemed to stick: a phlebotomist, a school paraprofessional and an administrative specialist in a real estate office.

At 27, Bogojevic made another career move after earning a two-year degree in law enforcement from Rochester Community and Technical College. It became a launching pad into a two-decade career that is now about to enter a new chapter: On Thursday, Bogojevic will become only the second woman to run the Minnesota State Patrol in its 95-year history.

For Bogojevic, what made State Patrol so much more fulfilling than anything she had previously tried was the “ability to do something different every day, and talk to people every day.”

“I hadn’t found that in any of the other jobs that I had held,” she said.

The question is whether the feeling is mutual. Most people’s interactions with the State Patrol come from peeking in the rearview mirror and experiencing an adrenaline rush from seeing flashing red lights. It’s not viewed as a pleasant thing by most drivers.

Christina Bogojevic begins her role as Minnesota State Patrol’s colonel on May 2. (Courtesy of the Minnesota State Patrol)

“You say it’s not a positive thing,” but the agency gets feedback — letters and social media posts — “thanking our troops for the work they do,” she said. Just recently, a woman driver took to Facebook to thank a trooper for pulling her over twice for erratic driving “that could have ended very differently.”

“It changed her driver behavior,” Bogojevic said.

Bogojevic, 48, will head a 900-person agency that includes 625 state troopers whose primary mission is enforcing traffic safety on the state’s highways and interstates. She takes over at a time when those roads have become markedly more dangerous. People are driving faster and more carelessly, pushing up the fatality rate 35% higher this year than last year at this time.

Bogojevic says a number of factors have contributed to that spike in road deaths: speeding, drinking and driving, lack of seat belt use, and a big counterintuitive factor has been the state’s relatively mild winter.

Snowy and ice-covered roads tend to induce more cautious driving. So even though there are more crashes during a typical Minnesota winter, they tend not to lead to serious injury or death because people drive slower. Now drivers are popping the clutch on the state’s snow-free roads and paying a deadly price. It’s among her priorities to reduce that number.

Bogojevic started her law enforcement career as a part-time police officer in Grand Meadow, Minnesota. Given the choice between working full time at an all-male police department or a State Patrol led by the first woman colonel, Anna Beers, she chose the latter because of the agency’s trailblazing role in elevating a woman to the top job.

After a brief stint in the east metro district, Bogojevic transferred to the Rochester district and rose through the ranks until being named colonel this month.

Like law enforcement nationwide, the Minnesota State Patrol is seeing sagging numbers in terms of applications and recruitment. But last week, she noted, the patrol graduated a new class of 35 troopers — a hopeful sign.

“Although our recruitment numbers are down, the applicants that we are getting are very qualified,” she said.

She hopes her elevation will have the same effect on job seekers as Beers had on her. Bogojevic co-leads the State Patrol 30×30 project, an initiative that seeks to have 30% of its State Patrol workforce made up of women by 2030. It’s an ambitious target. Only 8% of its workforce is currently made up of women.

“I’m hopeful that other females see this as an opportunity,” Bogojevic said. “The people of this agency are extraordinary. So to be able to lead them is a great honor.”

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Senate DFL leaders announced Sunday that Sen. Nicole Mitchell would be relieved of her committee assignments and would not caucus with DFL lawmakers while her burglary case proceeds in the courts.

Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, said in a statement that the situation is “tragic” and questions remained unanswered, but she stopped short of blocking Mitchell from participating in floor votes.

“While the case is under review both in the Senate and in the courts, Senator Mitchell will be relieved of her committee assignments and removed from caucus meetings,” Murphy said.

Murphy announced last week that an ethics probe into Mitchell’s arrest has started and the Senate Ethics Subcommittee is scheduled to meet May 7 to take up a complaint filed against her.

The announcement comes just under a week after Mitchell’s felony burglary arrest and as lawmakers ready for the last three weeks of the legislative session.

Neither Mitchell nor the Senate DFL caucus has said whether she will be in attendance this week. Even in her absence, she’ll loom large over what could get accomplished or fall by the wayside this year.

Last week, Mitchell was excused for both days the Senate came in. The first-term Woodbury legislator said in a statement that she had no plan to resign. Her term runs through 2026.

Sen. Nicole Mitchell’s empty seat is pictured during a session at the Capitol in St. Paul on Wednesday, April 24. (Ben Hovland / MPR News)

DFL leaders have not publicly called for her to step down and have said they’ll consider green-lighting her remote participation on a day-by-day basis.

“She’s elected to represent the people in the district that sent her here and they deserve her representation,” Murphy told reporters last week.

Senate activity on bills ground to a stop in Mitchell’s absence and questions remain about what could pass in an evenly divided chamber.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Melissa Hortman said the situation wouldn’t impact the trajectory for the DFL-led House. That chamber is set to vote on a raft of budget and policy bills this week including three that would add new gun restrictions on Monday.

“The conclusion I’ve reached is that we need to put our heads down and keep doing our work,” Hortman, of Brooklyn Park, said. “The senator is innocent until proven guilty, there are further dates scheduled in her criminal proceeding. I’ve gone back and looked at the record in the House and there have been cases where some very serious charges have been leveled against an individual and they remained serving and they remained voting until the charges were resolved.”

Democrats’ priority bills could hinge on the one-vote advantage in the Senate. Without Mitchell, the chamber stands at a 33-33 split. There is no tiebreaker vote.

If she steps down or continues to be away from the Capitol, bills that Republicans view as too partisan may stall. And if she comes back, Republicans have said that they could grind things to a halt as a protest of her participation.

“If they’re going to rely on somebody who’s under investigation for first-degree burglary to get their bills through, instead of working with Republicans in a bipartisan manner, shame on them,” said Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks. “This is about doing what’s right for Minnesota, not getting a political agenda through at this point.”

As budget touch-up bills and policy proposals move forward in the House, Republicans have sought to moderate them but haven’t had much success. House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, said she hopes that DFL leaders take GOP feedback into account and trim bills so they can pick up bipartisan backing.

“With (a) potential tie in the Senate, our votes are actually going to be needed on anything else that’s brought forward,” Demuth said. “We know that we could look at things that are not partisan, but need to be done finding a way to strip out any of the concerning things or the junk that might be in and finding ways that we could come to an agreement and be able to and serve the people of Minnesota.”

Without that sort of moderation, it remains to be seen if the bills will just hit a wall in the Senate or if Mitchell will return and provide the vote to get them through.

Negotiations are also underway for a public construction projects bill. Legislative leaders met last week to talk through parameters for the bill and for other measures that might be used as leverage to pass it.

Unlike other proposals, the bill requires a three-fifths majority of each chamber to pass because it lets the state take on debt to fund projects. Hortman said she asked GOP leaders to offer up their conditions for the bonding bill and accompanying proposals.

GOP leaders have floated a funding boost to emergency medical service providers in rural Minnesota as a condition of their support. The governor and DFL leaders have set a $16 million target, but EMS providers say they need significantly more than that to stay afloat.

GOP leaders also called for less state spending and opposed any new tax increases this year. Depending on how the ethics investigation into Mitchell’s arrest plays out, they could also ask for a fast-track for that as part of their negotiation.

Lawmakers don’t have to pass anything this year. They approved a two-year budget last year so the state government won’t shut down if they go home without passing a bonding bill or other spending bills.

DFL leaders said they remain hopeful that they can get their priorities across the finish line before the Legislature’s May 20 adjournment date.

MPR News senior politics reporter Clay Masters contributed to this report.

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