The Chicago Sky entered Tuesday night officially out of the playoff race, while holding a 4-11 road record with just a few games remaining in the 2018 WNBA regular season.
But that didn’t stop the Sky from being motivated to enter a tough Target Center environment to come out with a win against a team in the Minnesota Lynx that is still fighting for the best possible seed in the WNBA Playoffs later this month.
In a back-and-forth game on Tuesday night, Chicago took down Minnesota 91-88, beating the defending champions for the second time in three games this season.
“These are games that you think we know how to win, but for whatever reason these are the games that we are forgetting to dig in and get a stop and execute,” Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve said after the game. “We get a chance on the last play and we don’t even get a shot off.”
That chance that Minnesota got at the end of the game came with just over 20 seconds remaining, down 89-88. With a chance to win it in the final seconds, the Lynx ended up turning the ball over again, ending their hopes of coming out victorious.
The biggest factor in the game for Minnesota was on the defensive side, allowing Chicago to shoot 54.8 percent and score 21 points off 17 Lynx turnovers. That put Minnesota in a hole early on and was something it couldn’t climb out of.
“We had some chances to get some stops,” Maya Moore said. “I don’t know about the big picture, but I know this doesn’t feel good right now. We have a couple days and they we have another game.”
The Lynx struggled defensively right out of the gate against the Sky, allowing Chicago to shoot 60 percent from the field in the opening frame to trail 24-20. In the first quarter alone, Chicago was able to get to the free-throw line nine times, making six shots.
In the second quarter, however, Minnesota bounced back while hitting another gear to battle back into the game.
The Lynx outscored the Sky 23-15 in the second quarter to take a 44-39 lead into halftime. Moore and Tanisha Wight picked it up for Minnesota heading into the break, as Moore ended the half with a team-best 12 points along with four rebounds and Wright had a solid first half with 10 points, three assists and a team-best plus-9 in 15 minutes of action.
Coming out of the half, Minnesota regressed to how it opened up the game against Chicago, once again struggling on the defensive end of the ball. Turnovers and unnecessary fouls on the defensive end put the Lynx behind 68-66 after three quarters.
Moore was forced to sit midway through the third due to foul trouble, which resulted in the Lynx falling behind by as much as nine points. After Reeve was forced to put Moore back into the game with four fouls, Minnesota was able to cut the Sky lead down to two before heading to the fourth.
In the final quarter of play, the Lynx had multiple chances to take the lead and even possibly put the game away, but couldn’t do so. The Sky made a late run to take the lead and end up stealing a game on the road.
“We didn’t play any defense,” Reeve said. “Our thing is to string together some stops, we said it out timeout when we were getting ready to go out there. We had two plays, we were talking about executing those, getting stops and getting that separation. We did that and then you saw what ensued after that.”
Before she fouled out with just under two minutes to play in the game, Moore finished with a team-high 21 points and five rebounds to lead the Lynx. Sylvia Fowles, who had a big second half, finished with 19 points, 13 rebounds and four assists. She also recorded her 3,000th career rebound, becoming one of six players in WNBA history to grab 3,000 rebounds.
Starting at the point guard position for Minnesota, Tanisha Wright stepped in nicely, finishing with 12 points and six assists in 28 minutes. Seimone Augusts added 14 points of her own for the Lynx.
In her first game since announcing she will be retiring after the season, Lindsay Whalen resumed her role of coming off the bench for Minnesota. She entered the game for the first time midway through the first quarter, gathering a large standing ovation from the Target Center crowd. Whalen finished the game with six points in 16 minutes.
Diamond DeShields was the story of the game for Chicago, as Minnesota didn’t have an answer for her all game long. DeShields grabbed 28 points and four rebounds to lead the Sky.
“Diamond DeShields kicked our butts. … She played great, she made threes,” Reeve said. “Diamond just destroyed Maya Moore.”
With the loss, Minnesota dropped to 17-15 overall on the season, moving it down into sole possession of seventh place in the WNBA standings. The Lynx won’t fall any lower than the No. 7 seed in the playoffs, while trailing Phoenix by one game for the sixth spot and 1.5 games back of Los Angeles at the fifth seed.
“We are running out of time. We keep saying ‘on to the next one’ and you have to move onto the next one, but we are getting pretty close to saying ‘hey, you have to pass the test,’” Reeve said. “You had 34 regular-season games and then you have to play a playoff game. We can’t be saying the same things heading into Tuesday.”
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