The Mercury lost Diana Taurasi in the second quarter to an ejection, but rallied to edge the Monarchs 76-75.

Cappie Pondexter scored 21 of her 23 points after Taurasi was ejected with her second technical. "I was upset," said Pondexter, "It ignited us."Things like this, this is adversity. Things like this make a team grow up."

The Monarchs could not overcome their early foul trouble, despite dominating the boards. "Fouls were a big thing to overcome," Monarchs coach Jenny Boucek said. "If you look at the stats, they had 30 free-throw attempts to our 14. When we're the bigger team, when we were pounding it inside, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me."