NY Liberty Ends Chicago Sky's WNBA Four Game Win Streak

Rosemont, IL (June 8, 2010)—Chicago Sky entered Allstate Arena on a four game win streak as one of the league's hottest teams. New York Liberty entered the building with a big bucket of cold water.

Chicago got out to a brief lead, but was overtaken by New York in the first quarter and couldn't stay close after that.

New York got hotter as the game continued. In the third quarter the Liberty outscored the Sky 28-13. Chicago clawed back to within 15 by the end of the game, but they were never really in it.

In fact the New York game seemed to be a mirror image of Chicago's performance in the previous game, when they put Tulsa away by 25, and were never in serious jeopardy. Chicago shot over 50% from downtown as well as generally from the field while Atlanta's shooting struggled across the board. In this game, Chicago played as Tulsa had played, while New York took the Chicago role.

The Sky shot only 40.7% from the field and 25.0% from behind the 3-point line, less than half their completion rate from the previous game. Same script. Reversed roles.

It was obvious that any assumptions that the Sky had jelled as a team and was on a roll were proven premature. Now the big test for Chicago will be how well they are able to come back from this reversal.

Attendance was also disappointing, at 2,408.  

The only highlights for Chicago were the performance of Princeton rookie, Epiphany Prince (pictured above) who tied a personal high with 20 points while shooting 6 for 11, and the team's perfect free throw shooting, 11-11.  

New York's Cappie Pondexter led all scorers with 31. Pondexter was traded to New York from Phoenix just before the season started, in a three team deal that brought Shameeka Christon and Katherine Kraayeveld to Chicago and sent Candice DuPree and a second round draft pick from Chicago to New York.

After the game, Chicago coach Steven Key said, " I’m sad to say after winning four games in a row we come out here and play this uninspired basketball. That’s basically what it was; got nothing to do with anything else if we put the energy into it we have the skill and the ability. I’m not sure why but we definitely will find a way to fix it. And if somebody doesn’t want to play we will find someone who wants to play.

He went on to say, "E verybody knows that if you are not confident in what you are getting done, you are all over the place, and particularly for us they got a chance to shut us down because we weren’t comfortable on defense so we were playing poor defense and trying to get it back offensively and it looked very individual. When you’re not in rhythm it’s going to look like that."