Mystics end wild 2024 season with photo-finish victory in front of a league-record crowd

In the 40 minutes of basketball that took place inside Capital One Arena on Thursday night, the highs and lows of the 2024 Washington Mystics season were encapsulated into one game.

As a WNBA single-game record crowd of 20,711 fans watched, most of them in attendance to see superstar rookie Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever play, they witnessed a microcosm of what the Mystics went through over this 40-game campaign.

From being down 20-2 in the first quarter to taking as large as a 17-point lead in the second half to things coming down to one final sequence in the dying seconds of the fourth quarter, every emotion across the book was felt.

In the end, the roller-coaster ride ended with a 92-91 Mystics victory, closing the chapter on another season of women's basketball in Washington D.C.

"You can't start much worse and then got a lot better," head coach Eric Thibault said. "Maybe that's a theme for the year. We could have managed those last few minutes a lot better, but we did just enough. ... We feel better tonight walking out than we did a few nights ago."

For as bad as things started for Washington, with Indiana grabbing momentum early on and using the crowd to its advantage, what was a 20-2 deficit ended up a 24-22 deficit by the end of the first quarter.

After that point, a switch flipped for the Mystics and the game was turned on its head as Washington out-scored the Fever, 60-42, over the next two quarters, taking a 16-point lead into the fourth quarter.

That switch came from the bench, from players like Shatori Walker–Kimbrough, who scored 12 points, making her final case for WNBA Sixth Player of the Year.

"The bench came in, gave us a spark, ignited it and other people were able to feed off that," guard Ariel Atkins said.

Then came Sika Koné, someone acquired at the trade deadline from Minnesota, who scored a career-high 20 points, along with seven rebounds in 20 minutes on the floor.

"I was just going in there and trying to help the team as much as I can," Koné said. "... My teammates and this staff, they welcomed me and it wasn't hard for me to get used to everyone. It was like I had been here for a long time."

For as wrong as things went early on, Washington's confidence never wavered as through every close finish, this team knew that things would change.

The Mystics just needed that first win to do so and from that point on, they went from cellar dwellers in the WNBA to a potential playoff team, finishing the season with a 14-14 record over their last 28 games and an 8-4 record over their last 12 games.

"We never, ever made excuses for our team," Walker–Kimbrough said. "We continued to put our heads down because of how close we were, everyone just needed to get one percent better. ... People looked in the mirror and tried to be that much better, not just for themselves, but for each other because we knew we were playing for something bigger than ourselves."

Washington finished just a game behind Atlanta for the eighth and final playoff spot, needing a win, a Chicago Sky win and a Dream loss to have a chance at the postseason.

Those efforts came up just short, but it seemed like despite a number of injuries, including ones to star players Shakira Austin, a Fredericksburg native, and Brittney Sykes, and a ton of roster turnover, the Mystics were peaking at just the right time.

Now, the focus turns to the offseason as a franchise that won its first and only title five years ago looks to get back to that point soon.

"I think we showed that we can be a pretty good team," Thibault said. "We're just going to try to keep going. It's hard to go from a young, fun team to a big-time winning team and that's the challenge in front of us now."

Alex Murphy:

Sports reporter