Sports: Sun lose final regular season home game to Sky 96-83
Sky 96 Sun 83
Mohegan — A longtime (and wise) WNBA observer has often said, "the most desperate team wins."
A well-rested team usually wins, too.
The Connecticut Sun looked like a team playing their fifth game in 11 days on Friday night. They also looked like a team in need of a day off. Or two. And some really long naps.
The Chicago Sky, teetering on the edge of the playoffs and oblivion, were motivated and took it to Connecticut. They shot 50 percent from the floor and beat the Sun 9683, spoling the Sun's regular-season home finale before 7,761 at Mohegan Sun Arena.
"You could say that (we were tired) and use that as an excuse," Connecticut's Shekinna Stricklen said. "Chicago came in and really showed they wanted it more. They were constantly moving. They were constantly running the floor. They were all just locked in.
"On the other hand, yeah, we weren't all there."
It was a costly loss for the Sun (2011) in their race with the New York Liberty and Washington Mystics to earn either the third or fourth seed in the playoffs. Those seeds earn a bye to the second round and six days off between the end of the regular season and their first playoff game.
New York beat the Mystics 74-66 on Friday night. The Liberty (19-12) pulled to within a game of the thirdplace Sun with both teams having three games left in the regular season.
Washington (17-13) is 2.5 games behind Connecticut with four games left. That includes its home game
against the Sun on Tuesday.
Friday's game had a bad script for Connecticut before tip-off. The Sun were tired while Chicago hadn't played since Sunday and was embarrassed at home by the Seattle Storm 103-66.
"Oh, my God — we just tried to forget about that one," said Chicago's Allie Quigley (13 points, five rebounds). "It was just more of a sense of urgency tonight with the playoffs coming up."
The Sky (12-18) are on the brink of playoff elimination. And if that and Sunday's beating weren't enough motivation, they had been routed by Connecticut in their other two games.
“When we looked at this stretch (of games), we thought it was going to be really, really difficult," Sun head coach Curt Miller said. "It caught up to us tonight. And we looked like the tired team.
"(Chicago) did a really good job of moving and attacking us. They looked and played how we want to play — really up-tempo, really moving people. They can really make you look silly when you're a little bit slow on rotations, a little bit slow (reacting) to all the actions."
Stefanie Dolson had 12 points, nine rebounds and six assists for the Sky and Courtney Vandersloot added six points, 12 rebounds and four assists.
Reserve Adut Bulgak, who signed with Chicago on Wednesday, had 14 points and five rebounds.
The Sun were also hamstrung by foul trouble to leading scorer Jonquel Jones. She picked up two fouls with over six minutes left in the first quarter, and her third foul at 3:59 of the second quarter.
Jones missed all six of her field goals and played just 19 minutes. She had six points and 11 rebounds.
"I just felt like I didn't really have a chance to get into the flow of anything," Jones said. "Two quick fouls, I mean it happens often, but it's still annoying as hell."
Alyssa Thomas scored 14 points for Connecticut and Alex Bentley, Jasmine Thomas and Courtney Williams each scored 11.
The Sky opened the second half with a 20-8 run. A 3-pointer by reserve Jordan Hooper gave them their largest lead, 67-45, with 3:19 left in the third quarter.
"We've won games tired," Jasmine Thomas said. "It's hard to say that's the reason why we lost. We did feel slow (though)."