Six-time championship winning Hall of Famer Cheryl Reeve is new owner of a WNBA record.
She broke the record Wednesday with an 86-80 win over the Connecticut Sun. It marked Reeve's 380th win, which breaks the record for the all-time most regular-season wins for a WNBA coach.
“I am so glad this is over,” Reeve told reporters after the game.
It comes after the team’s first back-to-back defeat of the season Monday with a loss to Connecticut at home.
The record was formerly held by Mike Thibault, a Minnesota native who coached the Sun and the Washington Mystics. Now Thibault's son is an assistant coach for the Lynx.
Reeve said Monday that her and Thibault had “great battles” while she was an assistant coach for the Detroit Shock and he was at Connecticut. She called him a “tremendous coach.”
“I know he's happy for me,” Reeve said. “And somebody's going to pass me, and I'm going to be happy for them, too.”
This comes just weeks after Reeve's most recent accomplishment: being inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.
Her WNBA career has spanned 25 years starting when she made her league coaching debut with the Charlotte Sting in 2001.
Her first season as head coach of the Lynx was in 2010. Since then, she has won 4 championships with the team.
Now, she’s in her fourth year in the dual role of head coach and president of basketball operations at the Lynx. And she's been named WNBA Coach of the Year four times and WNBA Basketball Executive of the Year two times.
Accolades aside, veteran guard Kayla McBride said on Monday after their loss to Connecticut that the record didn't matter to Reeve when it came to getting out there on the court.
“Cheryl's not that type of coach. She doesn't want to talk about it. We don't talk about it,” McBride said. “She likes to win, and she's on us for all the other reasons, besides breaking records and things like that. And that's what makes her so great."
The Lynx have a 16-6 record. The Lynx face the New York Liberty at home Saturday.
"You never dream it's going to happen,” Reeve said. “I set out to just try to take it day by day, and you know, win games, and I just, what I feel is an overwhelming sense of feeling blessed for all the people that made me, me.”
