Familiar Heroines Rise As Mist BC Clears Path to Unrivaled Championship

Clutch antics from Arike Ogunbowale and Breanna Stewart guided Mist BC to the second Unrivaled title in Miami.

Deja vu all over again offered Mist BC the sweetest form of clarity at the Unrivaled finale in Miami on Wednesday night.

(Photo by Leonardo Fernandez/Getty Images)

Mist’s headliners felt young again at the perfect time, as heroines of NCAA Tournaments past paved the way to an 80-74 victory over Phantom BC in the domestic three-on-three league’s second championship offering. Breanna Stewart scored 32 points, including the victorious final couple at the foul line, while Arike Ogunbowale had 19 to help the Mist separate themselves from a record-breaking performance from Kelsey Plum on the spooky side.

“The first thing that I thought of when we won was just like, we deserve this,” Stewart said in the victorious aftermath. “We’ve been tested. We’ve gone through things. We’ve lost games. We got punched in the mouth in [the semifinals in] Brooklyn. But this group, we don’t ever waver. Our confidence doesn’t waver, and it doesn’t matter if we’re down 20 or up 20, we’re just going to still play hard every single time.”

Mist BC Wins the 2026 Unrivaled Championship

Wednesday’s game never reached the wide gaps that Stewart referenced, featuring ties after both the first and second periods, during which the lead never advanced past seven. League-leading Phantom kept a haunting aura over the game thanks primarily to Plum, who took matters into her own hands with newly-minted Defensive Player of the Year Aliyah Boston sitting out due to injury. Plum had 18 of the first 24 Phantom points and ended with a quadruple-decade of 40, setting a new league playoff record for single-game scoring.

From there, however, Ogunbowale and Stewart went back to school after collaborating on the game-winning basket in Monday’s semifinal comeback against Breeze BC.

Vibes are highhhhh pic.twitter.com/t4wdjSX8qp

— Unrivaled Basketball (@Unrivaledwbb) March 5, 2026

Ogunbowale, whose career is perhaps best known for her clutch disruption of the 2018 NCAA Tournament for Notre Dame, got the clutch antics out of the way early this time around, overcoming Natasha Cloud and Tiffany Hayes’ clogging of the key to secure penetration that allowed Mist to keep pace with Plum’s points.

It was enough for Stewart to immediately call for “Marchrike” when she took to the postgame podium armed with the Unrivaled championship trophy. For the time being, it also serves as a euphoric bookend to a rollercoaster campaign.

Arike Ogunbowale Played a Crucial Part in Mist Championship Run

As a prior member of Vinyl BC, Ogunbowale was on the losing side of the Unrivaled championship game the first time around, setting the stage for a rollercoaster WNBA affair with the Dallas Wings. Wednesday allowed her to become one of the few women on the women’s basketball circuit who can sit in the gym with a clear championship conscience while the WNBA and its players continue to negotiate terms of a new season.

Arike Ogunbowale celebrates her birthday by knocking down the game-winner in a 16-point comeback at a sold-out Barclays Center!

The Mist will take on Phantom in the UNRIVALED Championshippic.twitter.com/mhqHqDf3bV https://t.co/xfcGzOMBvW

— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) March 3, 2026

The same could be said about their teammate Allisha Gray, who finally earned a championship after a year of postseason purgatory: Gray endured early exits through the upsets of Lunar Owls BC and the Atlanta Dream before serving as the runner-up to league MVP Chelsea Gray in the most recent Unrivaled 1-on-1 Tournament. Now, with Veronica Burton, Alanna Smith, and Li Yueru rounding out the roster, they’re champions who had to be tutored in title etiquette (namely, the opening of champagne bottles) by Stewart.

“There was no big message [at halftime],” Mist head coach Zach O’Brien said. “I think [it was about] the character in this group and the winning mentality, the winning history in this group. I think they’ve seen every situation. They know how to close these games. So I’m just proud of them and happy they can get it done.”

Breanna Stewart Was The Ultimate X-Factor

Appropriately, it was the league co-founder, Stewart, who proved to be the ultimate difference, which eventually yielded the game’s MVP honors: luring Phantom into moving away from the tenacious if not raw paint defender Kiki Iriafen, Stewart would score 20 of Mist’s final 37 points earned in the second half.

Breanna Stewart added UNRIVALED Champion and Championship Game MVP to her incredible resume

COLLEGE
151-5 Record
4x Champion

WNBA
3x Champion
2x MVP & Finals MVP
6x All-WNBA 1st Team
3x All-Defense 1st Team
Most career 40-PT GMS
Most PTS in a single season

INTERNATIONAL
3x… https://t.co/z2paDhxrT6 pic.twitter.com/A4UXmZJ6Rz

— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) March 5, 2026

The best things in life proved to be free in the end: with Plum threatening to lead one last scary comeback, Stewart drove into the lane and was originally charged with an offensive foul against Hayes. A review instead sent her to the foul line, where she sank the fateful single that launched baby blue confetti.

“I think I pride myself on being a winner and continuing to kind of uplift and build a space for all players, and that’s what I’m really excited about,” Stewart said. “Unrivaled has been a tremendous success from year one to year two, but to be on top, crowned as the champions. It doesn’t feel any better.

“I think that at halftime, I was like, I’m not celebrating if we don’t win. There’s nothing to celebrate if we don’t win. We were not going out, and we wanted to just leave it all on the line,” Stewart continued, recalling the 43-all score at the break. “We came in, Zach gave a speech at halftime. He didn’t want to say it, but we know what he said, and we came out and knew that the third quarter was important, and really played for each other.”

Supporters of Stewart’s WNBA affairs could no doubt draw comparisons to the way she partly earned her last championship, as she previously sank a free throw that forced overtime in the winner-take-all closer of the 2024 Finals against Unrivaled co-founder Napheesa Collier and the Minnesota Lynx. It would’ve perhaps been cruel to ask Stewart to rank the championships she has earned at every level, but it’s clear that the Unrivaled hardware will shine a bit brighter in her crammed trophy case.

Kelsey Plum Makes History Despite Phantom’s Loss

The other side was accomplished yet somber in defeat: Plum’s 40 served as a thrilling end to a campaign where Boston was but one casualty on the road to the championship doorstep. Phantom secured the top regular-season seed despite losing Satou Sabally for the whole season and getting only eight minutes out of Dana Evans.

Kelsey Plum scored 40 (Unrivaled Playoff Record) in the Championship loss!

(Via @ShowCaseShabazz) pic.twitter.com/xhAbPoaaat

— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) March 5, 2026

“It kind of stings. It’s kind of fresh on my mind,” Plum said, offering her props to league Coach of the Year Roneeka Hodges. “Overall, it’s hard when it ends like this. But overall, it was an amazing season, and we really just had an amazing group and coach leading the way. I think our chemistry, that’s kind of what I learned, like how important chemistry is and how important it is to have everyone firing on all cylinders and really just having a team. It’s a tough way to end, but really proud of the body of work from the season.”

Geoff Magliocchetti is on X @GeoffJMags