Coming into play on Tuesday night, the Dallas Wings needed a win in the worst possible fashion.

Prior to hosting the Golden State Valkyries at College Park Center for the first time ever, the Wings sat at 1-11, losers of their last seven games.

In tough stretches like this, teams across all sports lean on their best players, and that is exactly what the Wings did tonight.

Paige Bueckers led all scorers with 20 points, and Arike Ogunbowale followed with 19 as the Wings took down the Valkyries by a score of 80-71 for their much-needed first home win of the season.

[This win] means a lot, especially at home,” Bueckers said. “The way the crowd supported us tonight and was our 6th woman on the court, and they just have stuck with us through the wins and the losses, and they continue to show their support, and it means a lot to get one here”.

“It also just means that we wanna keep building off this, we don’t wanna get complacent with our second win of the season, we wanna continue to keep building and progressing, and really just build off the energy and effort we played with tonight, I think we just continue to do that, good things will happen and the rest will take care of itself.

The Wings and Valkyries both came out firing in the opening frame, with the game being tied at 10 with 4:58 left in the period and then again at 16 with 1:49 to go.

From that point on, Dallas went on a 7-0 run to close the quarter with a 23-16 lead. During the run, Bueckers nailed a pair of off-dribble pull-up mid-range shots to finish with eight opening stanza points to lead all scorers.

Golden State’s 16 points were the least amount scored by a Wings opponent in the first quarter this season.

In the second quarter, Dallas led by as many as ten after a hot start, but Golden State used a massive 10-0 run to claim their first lead of the night with 2:20 to go in the half.

However, Ogunbowale and Dijonai Carrington came up huge for Dallas after that, knocking down back-to-back 3’s to help the Wings take a 39-36 lead into the locker room at halftime.

The second half did not start great for the Wings, who didn’t find the scoreboard until the 6:52 mark. With 4:31 left, Li Yueru drove to the rim and flipped home her first points as a Dallas Wing with her left hand to tie the game at 48 following a strong open to the half by the Valkyries.

At the end of the frame, Dallas led 58-57 thanks to a few big shots by Bueckers and Ogunbowale, who were the only Wings in double figures after three stanzas.

During a see-sawing fourth quarter, Dallas got back-to-back huge offensive possessions as Arike Ogunbowale nailed a three-pointer and then Myisha Hines-Allen drove for an and one to put the Wings up 69-67 with 6:14 to go.

Bueckers and Ogunbowale came up huge again with the game tied at 70. Bueckers hit a pull-up mid-range to put Dallas ahead, and then Ogunbowale splashed a three to make it 75-70 with 3:31 to go.

Fortunately for the Wings, it was very much a defensive battle the rest of the way, and a pair of free throws from Bueckers made it 78-71 with just 19 seconds left.

“It feels good just to get the win,” Wings head coach Chris Koclanes said. “We’ve gotta learn how to win. [We had] a tough game in Vegas down the stretch, and I think you saw a different tenacity in the last five minutes to really go and get it. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t perfect but we went and we took it and so we’re gonna continue to build off that and we’re gonna continue to clean up and get better with our execution down the stretch”.

“It was sloppy and we still have a ways to go, but if you’re giving that type of effort, you can make things happen and it did tonight”.