Arike Ogunbowale torches Team USA with All-Star record 34 points - ESPN

PHOENIX — Arike Ogunbowale sat in the locker room at halftime of Saturday's WNBA All-Star Game with zero points and Team WNBA trailing by two. Coach Cheryl Miller pointed to Ogunbowale and called her out in a surprise move.

«I wasn't expecting her to say my name,» Ogunbowale said. «She just told me to take a deep breath and play my game.»

That she did.

Ogunbowale set a new WNBA All-Star Game record with 34 points to earn her second All-Star Game MVP and lead Team WNBA to a 117-109 win over Team USA in front of 16,407 fans at Footprint Center in downtown Phoenix.

«I guess you guys saw what happened,» Ogunbowale said.

Miller's challenge worked immediately. Ogunbowale scored 21 points in the third quarter — the most in a single quarter in WNBA All-Star Game history — setting in motion a repeat of what she and Team WNBA accomplished three years ago, when it knocked off Team USA in the first All-Star Weekend with the WNBA-USA Basketball format. Ogunbowale was also named MVP of that game after scoring 26 points.

The national team rebounded from that loss to win a gold medal in Tokyo.

«It was like a little bit of a deja vu feeling, honestly,» said Team USA forward Brianna Stewart, who had a double-double with 31 points and 10 rebounds.

After the game, in response to a question that inadvertently mentioned the NBA instead of the WNBA, Team USA coach Cheryl Reeve quickly quipped about Ogunbowale: «It felt like we were guarding somebody from the NBA?»

Ogunbowale took her name out of the pool of candidates for the U.S. Women's National Team earlier this year. At one point during her postgame news conference, Reeve dropped another one-liner. «Is Arike playing for any of these teams that we're gonna play?» she said to laughs.

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