By Bailey Johnson

In the first quarter, it looked like it was going to be an easy win for the Dream. Atlanta was up by as many as nine points in that opening period, and the team seemed ready to cruise to a season-opening home win.

And then Dallas started scoring, and the Wings didn’t stop. A 15-0 run that began at the end of the first quarter went all the way until the 6:30 mark of the second quarter, when Brittney Sykes finally stopped the bleeding. From then on, it was clear that the game was going to be a battle.

“I think we got off to such a good start that there was a little bit of a feeling that it was going to be an easy night,” said Atlanta Dream coach Nicki Collen. “It’s just never an easy night in this league. You just don’t see a lot of blowout wins in the WNBA. You can get up 20 and before you know it it’s six. You have to grind wins out in this league because everybody’s good.”

Led by veterans Jessica Breland and Renee Montgomery, the Dream did just that. Breland’s 17 points and Montgomery’s 15 paced Atlanta to a 76-72 win over Dallas at State Farm Arena.

In many ways, the win reminded Collen of the Dream’s start last season. It took a few quarters of play for everyone to settle in and perform well, but the team’s mentality of battling and competing relentlessly drove the Dream to the win.

“It was ugly, but I think we did what we do and that’s battle,” Collen said. “It’s a little like the start of last season, I think, for us, where it takes a little time to get everybody on the same page, but we just don’t give up. We get down 10, we keep battling, and that’s just our mentality. I don’t think anyone on our bench or in our locker room felt like when we got down that we were out.”

Despite Montgomery and Breland’s offensive output, the majority of the team struggled to finish scoring opportunities. The Dream shot just 42.9% from the field, 26.7% from beyond the arc, and 62.1% from the free-throw line.

While the offense was struggling to find a rhythm, it was the defense — spearheaded by Elizabeth Williams and Breland — that helped the Dream keep the game close in the second half.

“Throughout the game, we know our defense is what carries us, so we just try to communicate,” Williams said. “I think in the first half we had a little bit of a letdown, but we knew that we were going to finish the game strong.”

And it was in the final sequences of the game that the Dream’s offense and defense came together to produce a win. Down six points with 2:12 left to play, Montgomery hit a 3-pointer to cut the Wings’ lead in half. The defense got a stop on Dallas at the other end of the floor, and Sykes was off to the races.

Sykes lined up for another 3-pointer to tie the game and was fouled by Wings rookie Arike Ogunbowale. She made two of the three free throws, leaving the Dream one point short of evening the score.

But Breland was there on the third attempt, right where she needed to be to catch the rebound and put the ball back in the net. Breland, too, was fouled on her shot, and the resulting and-one put the Dream ahead for good.

“We’ve come back enough, and we know that when we need stops late that we tend to get them,” Collen said. “You saw us really lock in defensively, make shots hard. … You erase a six-point lead in a hurry when, one, you get a good open shot for your best three-point shooter and then you do what you do, and you battle on the boards.”

The Dream now sit with a week to prepare for the Seattle Storm, who will come to town next Friday night at State Farm Arena. Collen plans to use this week as a minicamp and give her players a few days of rest before jumping into preparation for the Storm.

And it seems clear that the Dream will bring its intense brand of competition to that game, and all the games that follow.