Valkyries vs. Sun: Golden State Ties WNBA Record With 12 Different Scorers in 97-70 Rout

Juste Jocyte waited a year for her first WNBA minutes, then needed about five seconds to score. She checked in with 4:48 left on Monday night, ran off a screen and drained a jumper before her coach could finish processing it. "She scored I think in five seconds," Natalie Nakase said. "I was like does she know the play?"

By then, the Golden State Valkyries were deep into the kind of night where everybody eats. They hammered the Connecticut Sun 97-70 at Chase Center, tied a WNBA record with 12 different players scoring and set a franchise high with 53 bench points. Gabby Williams led with 15, which tells you how evenly the spoils got split.

Ten Points in Five Minutes

Williams opened with a scoop layup and a left-wing 3 for five of the first seven points, and Golden State was off to a 7-0 start. She hit 4 of her first 6 shots and had 10 of the team's first 17, all inside the game's first five minutes. Connecticut did hang around for a bit, getting to 25-22 late in the first, before Golden State closed the period on a 9-0 run that spilled into the second and made it 34-22.

Then came the Sun's lone push. Connecticut scored eight straight to cut it to 37-30 with 2:39 left in the half, and those eight points were all it would get in the second quarter. Golden State answered with 13 unanswered, stretching from 37-30 to 50-30 early in the third. The Valkyries led 47-30 at the half, and it was never close again. An 8-0 burst later in the third made it 63-35, and the lead was 73-48 going into the fourth.

The lead peaked at 34, on a Jocyte 3 with 1:44 left that made it 95-61. Fitting, really. On a night when the rotation went 13 deep, the biggest lead of the game came courtesy of a player who had not touched a WNBA floor until about three minutes of game clock earlier.

Everybody Got a Line

Williams played only 18 minutes and shot 6-of-10 with three 3s, finishing plus-21. Kaila Charles added 12 points, seven rebounds and two steals with a team-best plus-27, her fourth consecutive game with at least seven boards. Veronica Burton scored 11 with six assists and no turnovers in 17 minutes. Kayla Thornton took just six shots, scored five and still finished plus-26 thanks to eight rebounds and three steals.

The bench is where the box score turned silly. Kaitlyn Chen had 10, while Tiffany Hayes, Janelle Salaun and Laeticia Amihere scored nine apiece. Cecilia Zandalasini, back after missing four games with a concussion, hit her first two 3s for six points in nearly 14 minutes. Ashten Prechtel scored the first points of her WNBA career, finishing with five in five minutes. And Jocyte, the first draft pick in franchise history at No. 5 overall last year, went 2-for-2 with a 3 and two assists after arriving from overseas. The only Valkyrie who played and did not score was Ndjakalenga Mwenentanda, who missed her one shot.

Connecticut had almost nothing to celebrate. Aneesah Morrow came off the bench for 11 points and 10 rebounds, and Charlisse Leger-Walker scored nine on 3-of-5 shooting. Saniya Rivers missed all eight of her shots, and Hailey Van Lith, new to Connecticut this season, shot 2-of-7. Olivia Nelson-Ododa, who had sat out four games with a right ankle injury, returned on a 12-minute limit and used all of it in an unusual way: seven points, five assists and six fouls. Brittney Griner sat out with a rib injury, so the 6,000-point club in WNBA history will have to wait one point longer for its 18th member.

The Eight-Point Quarter

Connecticut's second quarter is the turning point, and it was over quickly. All eight of the Sun's points in the period came during one stretch of 3:21. Before it and after it, they had nothing. The Valkyries say that eight is tied for the fewest points they have allowed in any quarter in team history, and it turned a competitive five-point game after one into a 17-point deficit by halftime.

After that, Nakase could empty the bench and treat the rest of the night like a scouting session for her own roster. She did exactly that.

Stats That Matter

• Scorers: 12 for Golden State. That ties the WNBA record for different players scoring. Connecticut also had 12 players score, which tells you how much of the fourth quarter was played by reserves.
• Bench points: 53. A franchise high, and a 53-40 edge over the Sun's reserves.
• 3-pointers: Golden State 13-of-33, Connecticut 6-of-18. A 21-point gap from deep, even with Salaun going 1-of-9.
• Points off turnovers: Golden State 24, Connecticut 11. The Sun's 18 turnovers outnumbered their 13 assists.
• Paint: Golden State 34, Connecticut 20. The Valkyries also led assists 24-13.

Bouncing Back, Again

Golden State moves to 4-2 and 2-1 at home, and the team now has a useful habit: after its two losses this season, it has come back to outscore those next opponents by a combined 44 points. The 18,064 in the building made it 27 straight sellouts. Indiana comes to town on Thursday, with a Fever team that beat the Valkyries 90-82 just last Friday waiting to find out what this bench looks like at home.

Connecticut is 1-7 and 1-4 on the road, with a second straight loss. This was game four of a season-long five-game trip that wraps up on Wednesday in Portland.

Thirteen Deep and Counting

Most blowouts are forgettable by breakfast. This one might actually have some shelf life for Golden State, because Nakase got real minutes for 13 players and watched them all look comfortable. Williams understood exactly what she had just seen.

"Our depth is going to be our strength," Williams said. "I know it's only game six, but these minutes here are going to pay off in November."

That is a bold thing to say in May. Then again, it is hard to argue with a team whose 12th different scorer of the night was Ashten Prechtel, knocking down the first points of her WNBA career.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Game details as reported by the Associated Press. Postgame quotes and team notes from the Golden State Valkyries.