The WNBA’s first game in South Dakota, which will feature the Phoenix Mercury and the Chicago Sky, is a sellout.
The game — which sold out in seven minutes, according to a team source — will be played at the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, S.D., roughly 73 miles from the town of Jefferson where Mercury coach Nate Tibbetts grew up.
“I’m excited to go back to South Dakota,” Tibbetts told reporters earlier this week. “I get to go back once in a while, but I haven’t been back in a long time … to coach in front of a lot of family and friends. It’s a lot of people that have watched my career as I’ve grown. It’ll be neat. I’m looking forward to it.”
The Sanford Pentagon has a capacity of 3,250. Remaining tickets for Saturday’s game are being sold for resale prices of up to $3,454 on StubHub. The cheapest available seat was listed at $237 as of Friday evening.
“Year 16 and I’m going to South Dakota, how crazy is that,” veteran Mercury forward DeWanna Bonner said.
TIbbetts went to high school at Jefferson before transferring to school in Sioux Falls as a junior. The son of South Dakota Hall of Fame coach Fred Tibbetts, his transition into the WNBA aligns closely with his father’s career.
Fred Tibbetts coached high school girls basketball for almost three decades, amassing more than 500 wins, including a 111-game winning streak and seven undefeated championship seasons. He died of colon cancer in 2008.
Nate Tibbetts played for the men’s basketball team at the University of South Dakota before beginning his coaching career as an assistant for the University of Sioux Falls men’s basketball team. In 2005, he began a nearly 20-year journey in the NBA coaching ranks starting as an assistant with the Sioux Falls Skyforce — the Miami Heat’s G-League affiliate — and ending with a three-year stint as an Orlando Magic assistant before the Mercury hired him in 2023.
The Mercury advanced to the WNBA Finals last season, Tibbetts’ second at the helm, and they were swept by the Las Vegas Aces. Mercury general manager Nick U’Ren couldn’t keep Phoenix’s Big Three — Kahleah Copper, Alyssa Thomas and Satou Sabally — intact in free agency. Sabally, the Mercury’s leading scorer last season, signed a two-year deal with the New York Liberty, casting doubt on the Phoenix’s potential to return to the finals in 2026.