Aaliyah Edwards and the rebuilding Washington Mystics are ahead of schedule

Edwards missed much of training camp and the Mystics’ first four games of the season with a lower back contusion. She was expected to be reevaluated at the end of May, but she made her season debut ahead of schedule on Sunday.

Playing 15 minutes off the bench, Edwards had 6 points on 2-for-3 shooting and seven rebounds in the Mystics’ 68-62 road loss to the Phoenix Mercury.

“I feel great being back, playing alongside my sisters,” she told reporters postgame. “I think I’m over wearing streetwear on the bench. … It felt nice to be in the Mystics jersey again.”

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Edwards checked in for the first time four minutes into the game. She showed no hesitation about absorbing contact as she posted up defenders and looked for the ball.

With just under two minutes left in the first quarter, guard Brittney Sykes tried to get Edwards a shot in transition. But her pass was too much for Edwards to corral on the run, and it sailed through her hands for a turnover.

Sykes and Edwards connected two possessions later, when Sykes drew the defense and found an open Edwards. Edwards made the layup for her first points of the season, and she also had three rebounds and a steal in the first quarter.

“On the court, I could immediately just feel her presence as soon as she was there,” Citron told reporters postgame about Edwards. “She’s just relentless. She’s strong. … So I’m just really excited to keep having her on the floor and play with her and build that chemistry.”

Throughout the game, Edwards moved well on both ends. She was active defensively, at one point almost intercepting a pass near halfcourt, and helped limit Phoenix star Alyssa Thomas to 11 points on 4-for-10 shooting. On offense, she made lots of cuts in space and off screens, twisting and turning fluidly.

Twice in a row in the second quarter, Edwards drove to the rim with defenders all over her, missing once and drawing a foul the second time. On the next possession, she set a hard screen on the baseline to get Citron open for a corner 3-pointer. Edwards’ free throws and Citron’s three cut a 10-point deficit to 5 in the span of 56 seconds.

“We had some really good moments [as a team],” Edwards said. “So just to … feel like I was impacting in those moments on both ends of the court, it just feels nice.”

“She’s fierce,” Mystics head coach Sydney Johnson told reporters postgame about Edwards. “I mean, she’s a wonderful person off the court … but when she comes on the court, she’s not messing around. … I just love her ability to go out there on the court and be about her business and really want to be competitive. There’s a little bit of nastiness, which you got to have. …

“And then she’s also just a giver on the court. So she’s conscientious, she’s smart, she knows what schemes we’re trying to do, and she helps her teammates.”

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However, Edwards’ return wasn’t enough to keep the Mystics from losing their third straight game in the final minutes. They trailed by as many as 13 points in the third quarter on Sunday but led 62-61 with 1:23 left. Then Phoenix used a 7-0 run to snatch the victory away.

There was a similar ending on Friday against the Las Vegas Aces, a potential WNBA title contender. The Mystics had led for most of the game, including by 12 in the fourth quarter. But the Aces tied the game with 11.6 seconds left and won it on a 3-pointer with 2.5 seconds left.

And against the Golden State Valkyries on Wednesday — the first game in the Mystics’ three-game West Coast trip — the Mystics led 65-63 with 1:58 left before the Valkyries ended the game on a 13-9 run.

The Mystics could’ve won all three games and pushed their record to 5-0. But in each one, they allowed a 3-pointer that gave the opponent its final lead. The irony there is, looking at all 200 minutes the Mystics have played, they have the stingiest 3-point defense in the WNBA, allowing opponents to shoot just 26.6%. But they’re also allowing opponents to take 30.8 threes per game, the most in the league, so sometimes those shots will fall.

On the other hand, the Mystics could also easily be 0-5. In their first two games of the season, they trailed the Atlanta Dream and the Connecticut Sun by double digits in the third quarter. They clawed all the way back, and their opponents missed rather than made multiple 3-pointers with the game on the line.

Overall, the Mystics are still putting the puzzle pieces together, including figuring out their offensive identity. Johnson wants to play a fast-paced offense that looks to get good shots within the first eight seconds of the shot clock. But the Mystics aren’t shooting noticeably quicker than the league average yet. On Friday, Johnson said it was too early to tell whether his team was playing quickly enough for his liking.

“We just can’t say who we are right now, to be honest,” he said before playing the Aces.

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Still, the Mystics have shown more bright spots than expected for a team that was widely picked to miss the playoffs. They are the youngest team in the WNBA and the youngest in Mystics history, with an average age of just 24.9 years old. Johnson quipped after Friday’s game that whereas the Aces had four Olympians, his team had “four baccalaureates,” referring to the rookies’ recent college graduations.

The Mystics have played the most “clutch minutes” of any team, which WNBA Stats defines as when games are within 5 points in the final five minutes. They’ve had clutch minutes in every game so far, for a total of 21 minutes.

“I think it’s great for us, especially having these games early on in the season,” rookie forward Kiki Iriafen told reporters on Friday about playing a close game against an experienced Aces team. “… It’s only going to help us. The next time we play the Aces, we’ll be much better. And then even going on to the next [opponents] … we’ll know what to do in those tough moments.”

“As a player, you have to go through those moments,” Johnson said before Sunday’s game. “… We have worked on that in practice, but it’s just a different environment and a different learned lesson when it’s an actual game. So that’s just part of growing up. …

“We’ll get to the other side. I’m very confident of that. Just got to give ourselves a little bit of grace to get there.”

Citron and Iriafen have been major reasons why the Mystics have been such a tough out this season. Citron is averaging 15.4 points on 53.2% shooting, including 47.6% from 3-point range. She is also contributing 3.4 rebounds and 2.6 assists in 30.3 minutes per game.

Meanwhile, Iriafen is averaging 13.8 points on 51.0% shooting from the field and 11.2 rebounds in 30.3 minutes per game. She is the first rookie in franchise history to have four straight double-doubles, and she did it within her first five games.

Phoenix responded to both rookies’ hot starts to the season by double-teaming and blitzing them at times on Sunday, including crashing on Citron within the first 90 seconds. The strategy forced the rookies into 13 total turnovers — but they stayed confident and still combined to score 25 points.

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The fact that the Mystics are already working on figuring out how to win close games — not just figuring out how to stay in games — means that they’re ahead of schedule in their rebuild.

“To have our young group be in these games and carrying themselves like they understand that they belong … I hope people are not taking that for granted,” Johnson said before Sunday’s game. “I certainly am not. … We realize how steep the challenge is, and [I’m] just really proud that they can be in that moment and be like, ‘Hey, we belong here, too.’

“And now we’ve just got some things here and there that we can tighten up and maybe change some of the results.”

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The schedule remains challenging for the Mystics, with the Indiana Fever and the defending champion New York Liberty up next. But they will try to keep outperforming expectations and learning from everything they experience in games.

Edwards’ return will also help the Mystics continue to grow, especially as she builds chemistry with Iriafen in the frontcourt. Neither player has turned 23 yet, and they both have high ceilings that they’re not close to reaching. (Center/forward Shakira Austin will be another versatile option there when she returns from concussion protocol.)

Edwards and Iriafen played seven minutes together on Sunday, more than Edwards played with any other post player.

“I’m looking forward to our chemistry, especially when we get more into our high-low touches,” Edwards said postgame about playing with Iriafen. “… As the season goes along, I feel like we’re really going to be a big force.”