Sandy Brondello didn’t need to say Izzy Harrison’s name. Her message was clear enough.
After the Toronto Tempo got blown out 102-77 by the Atlanta Dream on Sunday, the head coach was asked about her team’s discipline. Her answer landed like a quiet gut punch.
“I think sometimes the emotions get the best of us, and take away from how we want to play,” Brondello told reporters, per Chelsea Leite of TSN. “But they’re all controllable.”
The comment came less than two hours after Harrison was ejected for a flagrant foul on Angel Reese. The play wasn’t just rough — it snapped a four-second video clip that flooded social media, showing Harrison grappling the Chicago Sky star to the floor with no play on the ball. Referees reviewed it and handed down a Flagrant 2, which comes with an automatic ejection.
A Dirty Moment With History
The sequence happened with 5:41 left in the third quarter. Toronto was already trailing. Harrison was leading the Tempo in points at the time, but her lapse in composure ended her night early. The irony: Harrison and Reese were teammates in Chicago during the 2024 season.
Brondello didn’t defend the play. She didn’t deflect. She simply acknowledged the cost.
“Losing Izzy obviously hurt,” she added. “They lifted the intensity up and their aggressiveness kind of took us out of what we needed to do.”
Harrison finished with 17 points, three rebounds, one steal, and two blocks in just 19 minutes. It was only her fourth game of the 2026 season after returning from a hand injury that kept her sidelined until June 7.
Tempo’s Growing Pains
For an expansion team sitting at 7-7, Sunday’s loss stung more than the final score suggests. Toronto had held its own through the first 14 games of the season, but the loss to Atlanta exposed a fragility that’s common for young teams: emotional discipline.
Brondello framed the next stretch as a test of control. “Just trying to have consistent effort and execution for as long a period as we can, but staying in the moment, not getting too high, too low,” she said.
Harrison’s ejection didn’t just lose Toronto a scorer — it handed the Dream momentum and turned a comeback attempt into a formality.
The Tempo won’t have long to dwell on it. They head to Indiana on June 16 for a road matchup against the Fever at 7 p.m. ET. If Brondello’s message lands, Harrison’s next shift will look a lot different.
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