Unrivaled will crown a 1-on-1 champion Friday. Here’s the inside scoop
It’s a tale as old as time.
Mano y Mano. You vs. Me. One-on-one.
Unrivaled will crown a winner of its inaugural 1-on-1 tournament Friday, the latest innovation from a league already well ahead of its competitors. Four players — the Mist’s Aaliyah Edwards, the Vinyl’s Arike Ogunbowale, the Lunar Owl’s Napheesa Collier and the Rose’s Azurá Stevens — will battle for supremacy in a game that emphasizes size, speed and conditioning because, after all, this isn’t your grandma’s 1-on-1.
“Just trying to stay alive out here,” Collier said in Monday’s postgame interview, putting her index and middle fingers to her neck as if checking her pulse. “It’s continuous, no stops, no timeouts. You have to really push through.”
Friday’s game will pit the 6-3 Edwards against the 5-8 Ogunbowale, a matchup of size versus quickness. Then the lengthy, 6-6 Stevens will face the defensive forward that is Collier, who’s no stranger to championship contention. The winners of each will face off later that evening in the championship. And don’t think just because players are teammates in one arena that they will take it easy in another.
“It’s a lot of pride,” Stevens said in Tuesday’s postgame interview following her 12-2 trouncing of the Vinyl’s Rae Burrell. “Obviously me and Rae are teammates in L.A. But when we step in these lines, it’s competition.”
The rules are as follows: shoot for ball. Twos and threes game to 11. Make it, take it. Seven-second shot clock. An outlet passer on the wing that can be used off the defensive rebound. The winner then gets to physically take her name and place it in the next round on the tournament big board in the arena, an ode to the similar process in March Madness. Overall, it’s a rather unique spin on the age-old classic that really emphasizes skill, per WNBA legend and Unrivaled commentator Lisa Leslie.
“One-on-one is even tougher” than 3-on-3, Leslie said during Monday’s broadcast, later adding “there’s nowhere to pass the ball to a teammate. Obviously you can use the guys on the side after a rebound but it’s just you, 1-on-1, attacking the person and really trying to take advantage of their footwork.”
One of the main competition drivers? The $200,000 grand prize for the winner, the largest share of the $350,000 pot that will be divided between the runner-up ($50,000) and semifinalists ($25,000). Each teammate of the winner will also receive $10,000.
“I’m trying to get that money,” said Collier, one of the league’s other co-founders. “Like Courtney [Williams] said, you’re going to have to go through me first.”
The games have already yielded their fair share of upsets. Shakira Austin of the Lunar Owls, a seven seed, knocked out the second-seeded Point God herself — Chelsea Gray of the Rose. The sixth-seeded defensive ace Courtney Williams of the Lunar Owls locked down the certified bucket that is the Vinyl’s Rhyne Howard, the No. 2 seed. By far the most surprising upset was the Mist’s Aaliyah Edwards’ 12-0 skunk of Unrivaled co-founder and teammate Breanna Stewart, one of the winningest basketball players in the sport’s history.
“I knew I had to stay hot, stay in rhythm, go to my spots, go to my moves,” Edwards said in Monday’s postgame interview. The respect between the two was obvious — Edwards just wrapped up her rookie WNBA season while Stewart just secured her third WNBA championship — and extended far past their University of Connecticut connection. “It’s kind of sad that it had to be her but it’s Mist season, UConn forever, baby.”
