UNCASVILLE, Conn. — The Sky didn’t just need a victory Monday against the Sun.
They needed to bury a team.
They needed to show that though they might be stuck near the bottom of the WNBA standings and searching for a way out of their early-season mess, they weren’t in the same category as the Sun.
The Sun entered the game 2-15, carrying a seven-game losing streak and the reality of a franchise in transition. They are experimenting with young players, slogging through their final season in Connecticut and preparing for their move next year to Houston.
This was a team the Sky were supposed to thrash.
Instead, they were run out of the Mohegan Sun Arena in a 92-63 loss that looked every bit as bad as the score suggested.
They played rushed. They were disconnected and totally outmatched by the last-place team in the league.
‘‘We were in a hole, and we just kept going down,’’ guard Sydney Taylor said.
It was a long way to fall after several almost-victories against top teams made it look as though the Sky were on the cusp of a breakthrough.
The Sky had pushed the Dream to the brink. They had taken the Fever to overtime. They almost had knocked off the Liberty. They had the Wings beaten until they didn’t.
Those losses hurt, but they also suggested the Sky might be on the cusp of something.
Monday suggested otherwise. Against the Sun, they were back to square one.
None of what had inspired the last two weeks traveled with them to Uncasville. The ball movement vanished. The shot-making dried up.
The Sky shot 40% from three-point range in their previous four games. Against the Sun y, they shot 13.3% from beyond the arc and 23.3% from the field overall.
Guard Skylar Diggins, the Sky’s leading scorer, didn’t make a shot.
Kamilla Cardoso, who had found a second gear Saturday with 26 points against the Wings, picked up two early fouls and spent the rest of the night playing on her heels.
But this wasn’t just a problem with Diggins or Cardoso. It wasn’t just a shooting problem. It wasn’t just bad officiating, a tired team or one of those nights.
The Sky couldn’t even muster an earnest spurt that sometimes softens a loss. There was no third-quarter push, no brief run to make the Sun uncomfortable, no stretch where the game hinted at becoming something other than what it was.
By the end of the third quarter, the Sky trailed 70-44 and had as many turnovers as made baskets.
That about captured the night.
‘‘We’ve just got to be better,’’ Cardoso said. ‘‘We’ve got to punch first. I feel like today they punched us first, so we’ve got to be more aggressive and punch them first.’’
Coach Tyler Marsh has spent much of this season preaching about the details: execution, ball movement, cleaning up the glass. Those kinds of details often decide close games, and the Sky have lost plenty of those.
But Monday wasn’t about the details; it was about the whole picture.
The Sky are now 4-12. They have lost six games in a row and 11 of their last 12. Their remaining games this month are against the expansion Fire twice and the Aces.
That gives them three more chances to prove Monday was an anomaly before the schedule turns cruel again.
But the Sky looked pretty far from a breakthrough against the Sun.
They looked like a team bottoming out.