Marina Mabrey torched her former employers for 37 points and nine three-pointers in a historic outing for the Toronto Tempo.
Crispy MM shooting guided the Toronto Tempo in a historic victory against her previously employers.
Marina Mabrey returned to Uncasville in style, tying a WNBA record with nine three-pointers en route to a career-best 37 points against the Connecticut Sun on Friday night. It was just enough to push the shorthanded Tempo (8-8) to halt a three-game losing streak and post a 101-97 victory.
“Obviously, she’s such a competitor. I’ve learned that over the short time that we’ve spent together,” Tempo head coach Sandy Brondello lauded. “She’s one of the best pure shooters that I’ve seen, and I’ve coached some pretty amazing ones. After the game, I said ‘looked like I was watching Diana Taurasi out there, because I’ve seen her get in the fire and just how effortless it is and just how far she can shoot out, the confidence that she has in it, it’s elite. It’s pretty special. We’re lucky to have her.”
MARINA MABREY TONIGHT
• 37 POINTS
• 4 REBOUNDS
• 4 ASSISTS
• 9/12 3PM (!!!!!!)
• 14/24 FG
• 33 MINUTES PLAYED pic.twitter.com/cBgiuzbnIA— Women’s Hoops Network (@WomensHoops_USA) June 20, 2026
Fun vs. the Sun
Friday marked Mabrey’s first time on the Mohegan Sun Arena floor since she was called upon by the Tempo in the recent expansion draft. She spent the prior two seasons in Uncasville following a trade from the Chicago Sky at the 2024 trade deadline.
While Mabrey struggled as the Sun’s headliner (a career-low 27% with an extra point on the line last year), she has gotten the league’s first True North franchise off to a solid start. Her latest takeover of the debut chapters of the Tempo’s record book came at a crucial time.
Injuries have placed Mabrey and the international visitors in a compromising position: Friday’s game saw the Tempo go without Kiki Rice, Nyara Sabally, and Brittney Sykes and it lost its prior two showings by a combined 47 points. Another addition to that dire output seemed imminent after Connecticut (2-15) jumped out to a 16-point lead just before halftime before María Conde barely beautified the margin with a last-minute three.
Fantastic Fourth
Toronto made little further headway in the third before Mabrey took matters into her own hands: having skipped the first minute, she re-entered the game after a mini-run for Leila Lacan re-boosted the Sun’s lead to 15.
With valiant assistance from Temi Fagbenle (perfect on four in the fourth), Mabrey broke loose for five threes in as many attempts, including the 26-foot dagger toward the end of the penultimate minute. Conde had previously rebounded her own miss to give the Tempo what proved to be a permanent advantage. While the fourth was also a showcase for Conde and Fagbenle, headlining duties in the fiery finale no doubt belonged to Mabrey, who landed a royal comparison from former Phoenix Mercury head coach and her current supervisor Sandy Brondello.
WHAT WE CAN SAY IS THAT RIRI PUT UP AN ALL-STAR PERFORMANCE TONIGHT!
pic.twitter.com/Cw7afy51zk
— Toronto Tempo (@TempoBasketball) June 20, 2026
MV3
Mabrey is the seventh woman to sink nine threes in a WNBA game and the second this season after Chelsea Gray did so for Las Vegas eight days prior. Of that sisterhood, however, Mabrey’s dozen attempts are the fewest required to reach that landmark, passing the record that Gray shared with Kelsey Mitchell‘s 2019 performance, which also came against Connecticut.
Whether literally or for the simple sake of decency, Mabrey was left speechless after the clock hit zeroes in video captured by Toronto’s social teams. Even with Fagbenle unable to stop gushing over her historic box score, Mabrey got her voice back when she hit the podium, hoping that her collaborative weekend-opening heroics would set a tone for the Tempo’s next bars.
“There’s defenses out there geared to stop me and to make me give the ball up all the time. I have to look for pockets where they relax,” Mabrey noted, taking pride in the fact that four Canadians finished with double-figures. “That’s when I can attack. My teammates do a really good job of recognizing when they’re relaxing and letting me kind of go a little bit rogue, try to find some shots.”
“But, on the flip side, when they are geared towards me, I need to also move the ball and get my teammates involved too so we can have these multiple double-figure [scorers]. I think a lot of it is being ready when they relax and my teammates are doing a good job of that too.”
Being enthused by the fact that her historic breakout was a team effort was a common theme of Mabrey’s postgame reaction: the Tempo won the rebound battle by six after an early deficit despite missing Sabally and the 29-year-old rookie-in-name-only Conde put up a WNBA career-best at 19.
“Us getting to the second side action instead of me trying to play it off the first,” Mabrey said of the key to Friday’s win. “My teammates, especially Izzy [Harrison] and Temi, they really set great screens off the handoff for me and then Julia [Allemand] did a really good job of finding me. Obviously, everybody else, but those three did a really great job of finding me.”
“Three of our top players, they’re on the sidelines,” Brondello said. “We got gritty. We got tough and we found a way. We couldn’t make excuses, we did not play well. But we found ways. Marina shot the ball out but they stayed together and just kept making plays. Sometimes that’s all you need. Good things happened.”
Mabrey’s first chance at a follow-up lands on Monday when the Tempo heads south to face the Atlanta Dream (7:30 p.m. ET, TSN).
Geoff Magliocchetti is on X @GeoffJMags
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