Aces vs. Sparks: Chennedy Carter's 22 Off the Bench Fuels Las Vegas' 105-78 Bounce-Back Rout

The morning after is a Las Vegas specialty. On Saturday, the Aces collected their championship rings and then took a 99-66 beating from Phoenix at T-Mobile Arena. On Sunday afternoon they turned up at crypto.com Arena and handled it the way the city recommends: get up, act like nothing happened, and make somebody else pay for it.

Las Vegas beat the Los Angeles Sparks 105-78, turning the Sparks' season opener into an afternoon of damage control. Chennedy Carter came off the bench for 22 points, Jackie Young tossed in 20 with nine assists, and the Aces shot 62% from the field on 43-of-69 shooting. The team says that is the second-best regular-season mark in franchise history, topped only by 63.2% from the San Antonio Silver Stars in a 2010 win over Tulsa.

No Lead Changes, One Scare

The Aces scored the first four points and never trailed, and the box score shows zero lead changes in a game they led for 99% of the time. The first real statement came late in the opening quarter. A Los Angeles 3 with 3:36 left got the Sparks within 15-14, and then their offense simply stopped existing. Las Vegas closed the period with 14 straight points while LA went 0 for 6 with three turnovers, and it was 29-14.

Give the Sparks credit for the second quarter, because it was a legitimately strange turnaround. Los Angeles scored 19 of the last 24 points of the half, nine of them from Kelsey Plum, and what looked like a blowout was suddenly 42-41 at the break. Four Aces turnovers in the final 2:45 helped that along, and for one halftime the Sparks had a real game on their hands.

It did not last. Las Vegas opened the third with a 12-4 spurt, and Carter's layup with 4:21 left in the period made it 61-51. The Aces stayed in double figures from that point on, won the quarter 33-18 and shot 14 of 19 in the process. The Sparks never got closer than 15 in the fourth. Carter scored nine in the final period, including a three-point play that made it 101-73, and a 9-0 run late pushed the lead as high as 32 at 105-73.

Carter Lit It Up, Wilson Hit the Record Books

Carter was the most efficient scorer in the building by a wide margin. She needed just 20 minutes to score 22 on 9-of-13 shooting, and her plus-28 was the best number either team posted. Young was almost as good, shooting 8 of 12 with five rebounds to go with the nine assists and finishing plus-25. Chelsea Gray scored 16 and hit 4 of 5 from 3, although her six turnovers are the kind of thing a coach mentions on the plane. NaLyssa Smith went a perfect 5 of 5 and scored 12 in 16 minutes.

A'ja Wilson's 19 points and four rebounds look routine until you check the ledger. She now has 2,502 career rebounds, and the 269 games it took her to reach 2,500 tie Lisa Leslie for the third fastest in WNBA history. Tina Charles holds the record at 248 games. The Aces add that Wilson is the 12th WNBA player to have both 5,500 points and 2,500 rebounds, and that nobody has gotten to that combination faster: 269 games to Charles' 301.

Plum did what she could for LA, scoring a game-high 27 on 10-of-18 shooting. Nneka Ogwumike, back with the Sparks after two seasons in Seattle and 12 before that in Los Angeles, gave them 19 points and 10 rebounds. After that, the shooting chart got grim. Ariel Atkins and Erica Wheeler each went 0 for 6 from 3, and Wheeler was 1 of 11 overall. Los Angeles grabbed 15 offensive rebounds and still shot just 37%, which means plenty of second chances that did not help much.

The Third Quarter Is Where It Got Serious

The game's real pivot came right out of the locker room. The Sparks had just spent a quarter proving they could play with the champs, and they gave it all back in about five minutes. Three early turnovers fed the Aces' run, Las Vegas started getting whatever it wanted at the rim, and a one-point game became a 10-point game before anyone could call it a contest. Shooting 14 of 19 in a quarter will do that to a home crowd of 12,266.

Stats That Matter

• 62%: Las Vegas from the field, on 43-of-69 shooting.
• 62-40: The Aces' margin in the paint. Per the team, it is only the sixth time an Aces, Stars or Starzz team has hit 60 inside.
• 10-0: Las Vegas' edge in blocked shots. Yes, zero.
• 28-11: The assist gap, which explains where those easy looks came from.
• 26-11: The Aces' advantage in points off turnovers, with the Sparks giving it away 19 times.

What It Means

Las Vegas is 1-1 and 1-0 on the road, and everyone can stop asking whether the champs have a problem for at least a few days. The Aces have now won three straight against the Sparks in Los Angeles, according to the team, and next they head to Connecticut for games on Wednesday and Friday. Getting 22 points from one reserve in 20 minutes, on the second of back-to-back days, is a nice thing to have in your pocket.

Los Angeles is 0-1 and 0-1 at home, with Indiana coming in on Wednesday. Plum and Ogwumike look like they will carry plenty of the scoring, but a defense that allowed 62% shooting and blocked zero shots has a long list of things to talk about before then.

Sequel Rights

The Hangover is two hours of people waking up wrecked and trying to piece together how things went so wrong. The Aces cut the runtime down to a single day, then wrapped the whole thing with a 27-point win on the road. No answers needed, no tiger required. Connecticut gets the sequel on Wednesday.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Game details as reported by the Associated Press and the Las Vegas Aces.