Chicago Sky Wins Record 4th In a Row, 3 Players Hit Personal Milestones

Rosemont, IL (June 5, 2010)--  Wake up, Chicago. There's a new sheriff in town. Suddenly the Chicago Sky is the hottest team in the WNBA, and for now at least, Chicago's best professional basketball team.

After starting the season 0-4, the Sky have evened their record at 4-4 by setting an all-time record, winning four in a row. Their fourth victim was tonight's opponent, the Tulsa Shock.

Formerly the Detroit Shock, coached by ex-Piston great Bill Laimbeer, the Shock couldn't compete for the stretched sports dollar in Detroit as the motors in Motor City began sputtering of late. The franchise was saved from extinction by investors in Oklahoma, including one of the owners of the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder (formerly Seattle Super Sonics) and moved to Tulsa. Only three players on last season's team remain, and their new coach is former Arkansas Razorback skipper, Nolan Richardson.

Richardson's style of play at Arkansas was called "40 minutes of hell." He is attempting to use it with the Tulsa club, but tonight it was his own team feeling the heat.     

Tulsa never led but managed to stay close for most of the game, trailing by as few as two points and no more than ten, until the fourth quarter.

The sharp shooting of Shannon Crossley kept the Shock (3-4) within reach for three quarters. She finished 5-for-6 from behind the arc, for 20 points. Scholanda Richardson and Plenette Pierson came off the bench with 15 and 14 points respectively.

Then Chicago went on a 25-4 run, and suddenly Tulsa was just marking time till the game would be over. The lead extended to 93-65 before the visitors narrowed it a bit, finally losing by a margin of 25.

“We didn’t have it,” Coach Richardson said. “We’re just out there going through the motions. We’re dead. This is our first back-to-back (games in a row) and I haven’t seen anything like it.”

In addition to the team milestone of 4 consecutive wins, it was a milestone night for three Sky players.

Dominique Canty recorded her 8,000th minute played, becoming just the 28th player in league history to reach that mark.

Shameka Christon tallied 17 points, 15 in the first half. As four of her buckets were from long range, she surpassed 300 career 3-point scores. She is only the 21st player in WNBA history to reach that milestone.

Sylvia Fowles (pictured above) led the Sky once again with a career-high 32 points. That was seven points more than she needed to hit 600 career points in just her second season. She also blocked four shots, at key moments in the game, turning or accelerating the momentum Chicago's way, and grabbed 13 rebounds.

“The coaches have really looked to me to lead on the floor, so I’ve made some adjustments to rebound some more,” Fowles said. “Once I did that, everything else just got put into perspective.”

Coach Key attributed much of Fowles' success to the team's three-point proiciency. The Sky shot better than 50 percent from outside the arc, hitting 11-21, and 54.7 percent from the field overall.

"We've got (a) number of players who can score from outside, leaving Sylvia more opportunities to do her work on the inside. It's working, and she's showing us every bit of the ability we knew she had."   

But despite some big individual stats, it was a complete team effort. For the first time this season, every player had playing time and every player scored. That includes rookie Abi Olajawon, daughter of Houston Rockets legend Hakeem.

Erin Thorn added additional credence to her role as sixth woman with seven points, three steals and five assists in just 20 minutes of court time.

Rookie Epiphany Prince distinguished herself on defense again, with four steals in 19 minutes of play, keeping her steals per game average at three.  

Free throw accuracy was another story, however, as the Sky hit only 14 of 22, but that would be the only low-poinit of the evening.

When asked what's changed since the 0-4 start, Key said, “We knew this would come. We had a lot of new faces, and had only been together for six or seven days before the season started, and were still learning each other’s games. We just had to get on the same page.”

The attendance of 4,549 was barely below the season average thus far, of around 4,700. That is 800 ahead of last year's season average. The crowd was loud, but again, given the larger capacity of the new venue (Allstate Arena) the crowd looked more sparse than it was.

This was the first of a three-game home-stand. Next up, New York on June 8th at 7PM, followed by the Washington Mystics on Friday the 11th at 730.