The Vinyl beat the Lunar Owls 75-68 on Monday night to complete the six-team Unrivaled playoff field.
“They knew what was at stake,” Vinyl coach Teresa Weatherspoon said. “I just said, ‘Hey, there is no tomorrow.’ You can’t think, ‘Oh, I have a game to play tomorrow,’ because there’s no game tomorrow. It’s right now. They were about the moment.”
Vinyl BC was the final team to crack the playoff bracket. The Phantom, Laces, Mist, Breeze and Rose had already secured their spots.
The Lunar Owls and Hive were eliminated from playoff contention.
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Leading the Vinyl’s playoff-clinching game was Rae Burrell, who finished the night with her first 30-point game for Unrivaled. Just two nights prior, she had scored a then-career-high 24 points.
“It was a really important game,” Burrell said. “We knew that we wanted to make this playoff push and (Weatherspoon) told us today … We’re not thinking about any other scenarios if we lose. No. It was just that we are winning. I knew to come in with that aggressive mindset.”
Playoff seeding will be determined next week during the final night of the regular season.
The Phantom sit two games ahead of the Laces for the top seed, and the Mist are just a half-game behind the Laces. The Breeze, who currently occupy the fourth seed, have just a half-game advantage over the Rose in fifth. The Vinyl are two games behind in sixth.
The playoffs will feature three rounds of single-elimination games. Whoever claims the No. 1 seed will be awarded a first-round bye and will automatically advance to the semifinals.
The semifinal games will be held at Barclays Center in New York on March 2, instead of the league’s home base in Miami.
The decision to take the playoff games on the road stems from the success Unrivaled had in January during the double-header in Philadelphia. The event set a record for the most attended regular-season professional women’s basketball game ever, selling out the 21,490 seats at Xfinity Mobile Arena.
The championship game is March 4 at Sephora Arena in Miami. The prize pool for the players who win the title is $600,000.
