Chicago – Four nights earlier, the Lynx had lost to the worst team in the WNBA. At home. Scoring a season-low 59 points.
Lynx lose to Chicago Sky as their shots don't fall
Minnesota shot only 35.5 percent in another failure against a struggling team.
By News Services
July 8, 2018 at 4:49AM
Perhaps that awful effort taught the defending league champions not to look past anyone and not to play down to a bad team's level.
Or maybe not.
The Chicago Sky, mired in 10th place in the league standings, stunned the Lynx 77-63 on Saturday night at Wintrust Arena, the home court for DePaul University.
The Sky shot 47.6 percent from the floor and were even better on three-pointers, going 9-for-17 (52.9 percent).
"They had a lot of open threes," Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said. "They had stuff out in transition. They had 20 fast-break points, so you're going to shoot a high field-goal percentage when you're getting that many looks in transition.
"They got easy looks and they played with a great flow about them."
Maya Moore led the Lynx (11-8) with 16 points, but she needed 16 shots to reach that total. Seimone Augustus had 11 points while Sylvia Fowles, playing against her former team, had nine points and 13 rebounds.
The Lynx shot 35.5 percent from the floor and were 5-for-18 on threes.
This was a meeting between the league's two best three-point shooting teams. The Lynx were at 36.8 percent from three-point range, the Sky 36.6, but Chicago outscored the visitors 27-15 on threes.
Allie Quigley had 15 points and Courtney Vandersloot 12 points, nine assists and seven rebounds to lead Chicago (7-12), which ended a three-game losing streak and evened its home record at 5-5. Quigley was 3-for-5 on three-point shots.
The home team has won 14 of the past 16 games in this series.
The Lynx came into this game with reason for confidence. They had won eight of their past nine games and, after losing to Indiana 71-59 when they shot 32.8 percent, beat the fourth-place Los Angeles Sparks, their archrival, 83-72 on Thursday when Rebekkah Brunson grabbed 12 rebounds to move up to first on the league's career rebounding list.
Against the Sky, Brunson had two points and seven rebounds. Point guard Lindsay Whalen was even more of a nonfactor with two points and three assists in 19 minutes.
Chicago, which was giving up a league-high 89.1 points per game, held the Lynx to their second-lowest point total this season, only four points more than they scored in Tuesday's loss to the Fever.
"Give credit to Chicago," Whalen said. "They played a really good game and we didn't."
With the score tied 42-42 in the third quarter, Quigley and Cheyenne Parker made back-to-back layups and Vandersloot hit a three-pointer to put the Sky ahead to stay.
Moore's layup early in the fourth quarter got the Lynx within 68-61, but the Sky scored nine of the final 11 points.
"I'm really excited to go home and watch this film," Sky coach Amber Stocks said. "… The way our team buckled down, played together and played defense is really remarkable."
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