Mercury to Take on Indiana in Opening Round of WNBA Playoffs

The three-time WNBA Champion Phoenix Mercury will open the 2016 WNBA Playoffs in a win-or-go-home single-elimination showdown this Wednesday with the Indiana Fever at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. The game will tip at 3 p.m. Phoenix time and will be broadcasted live on ESPNNews.

Phoenix visited Indiana twice during the regular season and split those two matchups, coming away with a 79-65 victory on Aug. 30. The Mercury holds a 3-2 all-time record over Indiana, after defeating the Fever to claim the 2009 WNBA title, and is 1-1 in postseason play at Bankers Life Fieldhouse.

The eighth-seeded Mercury will take on the fifth-seeded Fever while the sixth-seeded Atlanta Dream will host the seventh-seeded Seattle Storm under the new WNBA’s new playoff format. The winners of these games will advance to play either the third-seeded New York Liberty on Saturday, September 24 or fourth-seeded Chicago Sky on Sunday, Sept. 25. Those will also be single-elimination games with the winners advancing to the best-of-five semifinals against either top-seeded Minnesota or second-seeded Los Angeles.