NEW YORK (AP) — The Minnesota Lynx have three straight games against the New York Liberty due to a scheduling quirk.
A rematch of last season's WNBA Finals feels in some ways like a playoff series for the Lynx, who beat the Liberty on Sunday 83-71 before traveling home. The team doesn't play again until hosting New York on Saturday. The Lynx then return to Barclays Center to face the Liberty on Aug. 19, playing three times in nine days.
“It’s a weird schedule, three games in nine days,” Minnesota guard Kayla McBride said. “You get to know a team and what they like to do."
New York doesn't have the same luxury, heading west for back-to-back games against Los Angeles and Las Vegas on Tuesday and Wednesday before traveling to play Minnesota for the home and home set.
“It would have been nice to have it be spread out a little bit,” New York coach Sandy Brondello said. “It’s a series with a few games extra for us, not for them.”
This is the fifth time since 2013 that one team has played another in three straight games in the regular season, according to Stats Perform. New York and Las Vegas played three straight games against each other in 2022. The year before the Lynx had three consecutive matchups against Indiana.
A number of factors go into scheduling such as arena availability.
The two teams will have played four times over a three-week stretch with Minnesota winning the first matchup at home on July 30.
New York star Breanna Stewart will most likely miss all of the games while recovering from a bone bruise in her right knee. Minnesota's Napheesa Collier, who is a front-runner for the MVP this season, was out for Sunday's matchup while dealing with a sprained right ankle. She might miss the next two meetings as well as she recovers.
“You never know what’s going to happen with teams and like the league didn’t know that Phee and I were both going to be out,” Stewart said. “You want to see everybody full throttle. That's the first game of the season or the second or the third, not August.”
Minnesota (27-5) currently has the best record in the WNBA with New York 6 1/2 games behind.
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Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve calls out to players during the first half of a WNBA basketball game against the Las Vegas Aces Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025, in Las Vegas. (Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun via AP)
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday ended more than 60 years of federal oversight of a Louisiana school system that had been ordered to eradicate all vestiges of segregation.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a decades-old desegregation mandate for the Concordia Parish School Board, handing a victory to President Donald Trump’s administration, which has pushed to end the court-ordered plans. The school system has been a focal point in the administration’s attempt to end legal cases dating back to the Civil Rights era.
The U.S. Justice Department spent decades fighting for such cases but reversed course under Trump. Officials in his administration have framed the remaining orders as federal intrusion into local school systems. Louisiana officials agree they're no longer needed and describe them as relics of a time when Black students were once forbidden from attending some schools.
“The good people of Concordia Parish elected their school board to govern their schools — not unelected federal judges,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in announcing the ruling. “Today’s decision puts that authority back where it belongs."
Members of the Concordia Parish School Board did not immediately respond Tuesday to emails seeking comment.
Families who brought the suit are no longer involved.
The Concordia Parish case dates to 1965, when the area was segregated and home to a violent offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. Black families in Ferriday, a town on the central-eastern border of Louisiana, sued for access to all-white schools, and the federal government intervened. As the district integrated its schools, many white families fled Ferriday.
The district’s schools came to reflect the demographics of their surrounding areas. Ferriday is still mostly Black and low-income, while Vidalia is mostly white and takes in tax revenue from a hydroelectric plant.
Some parents and civil rights groups have argued that desegregation orders remain important tools to address racial disparities in student discipline, academic programs and teacher hiring.
The Concordia Parish order was used to stop a charter school that opened in 2013 from favoring white students in admissions.
FILE - Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill speaks with attendees during an election night watch party for U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Julia Letlow, R-La., May 16, 2026, in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton, File)
