Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

First of all, the Lynx scored a bunch of points, led by Napheesa Collier and backed up on the scoresheet by contributions from Diamond Miller and Kayla McBride, and Minnesota outran Seattle.

Throw in that the Minnesota Aurora won again, and that the Saints scored double-digit runs, and Thursday night in Minnesota sports had some real déjà vu going on.

For the Lynx, it was their second game in three days against Seattle, and on the heels of a 104-93 win, Minnesota put up a 99-97 win, this time in overtime. The box score looks almost the same. Collier had 33 points on Tuesday, and 31 on Thursday. McBride and Miller both had 18 points on Tuesday; McBride and Miller both scored 19 points on Thursday. Dorka Juhász chipped in 10 and 12 on Tuesday, and 11 points and 8 rebounds on Thursday.

Maybe more importantly for this one, all three of McBride, Miller, and Collier were involved down the stretch in overtime. In the last two minutes, McBride hit a game-tying three, Miller hit a clutch driving layup to tie the game again, and Collier hit a fadeaway for the winner.

Minnesota is now 5-0 against Los Angeles and Seattle, and 1-9 against the rest of the WNBA - but as of this morning, they’re in the playoff spots, and their next three games are against teams below them in the standings (two with Phoenix, one with Indiana).

I suppose collapsing is still a possibility, but right now, landing the fifth seed in the playoffs seems more likely.

The Minnesota Aurora won again on Thursday night, beating Green Bay 4-0 and running their season record to 11-0-0. They now have a goal differential of +49 - 53 goals scored, four goals allowed.

This is the story of the two years of the Aurora; they drew their first game in 2022, and since then, have won 22 consecutive regular-season games. They’ve also found a way to expand capacity for Saturday night’s regular-season-ending game against Chicago City, so they’re about to set another USL W League record for attendance, too.

It’s just success after success with the Aurora. They’ve made it routine.

Over in St. Paul, Matt Wallner homered twice and Randy Dobnak pitched five shutout innings, and the Saints beat up on Gwinnett, 13-7. Journeyman catcher Mark Kolozsvary, who signed in St. Paul last week, had a homer and three hits, as well.

Kolosvary is one of those interesting Triple-A cases that you see a lot. He played in ten games for the Reds last year; they waived him. Baltimore claimed him, and eventually managed to get him to the minors; they just called him up, he played in a game but didn’t bat, and they designated him for assignment.

Now he’s with St. Paul. The Saints don’t need a lot of catchers, and the Twins have two as well, but he’s a 27-year-old with major-league experience now. It hardly matters what his stats are. He is the definition of the term “organizational depth.”

That’s Triple-A baseball for you. You’ve got a mix of names you know because they’ve spent a lot of time with the Twins, names you know because they’re up-and-coming prospects that are being tried out at the closest-to-the-majors level, and names that just seem to appear and disappear out of nowhere, like they’ve been computer-generated.

TONIGHT’S SLATE

TWINS at Baltimore, 6:05pm

SAINTS vs Gwinnett, 7:07pm

ON DECK

LOONS vs Portland, Saturday
LYNX at Phoenix, Saturday

AURORA vs Chicago City, Saturday
CROWS at Milwaukee Bavarians United, Saturday
MNUFC2 vs Portland Timbers2, Sunday