COLLEGE PARK, Ga. — There were stretches during the Sky’s game Friday against the Dream in which they looked exactly like the team coach Tyler Marsh has been envisioning. Even through three quarters, they held their ground against one of the WNBA’s best teams.
It all fell apart fast in the fourth quarter, however, as the Dream stormed to an 88-70 victory at Gateway Center Arena. And that leaves Marsh to figure out whether this incremental progress was truly the start of something or merely a blip.
“We’ve got to continue to emphasize the positives from it and improve on the negatives in that fourth,” Marsh said. “We’ve got to do a better job stopping the bleeding.”
Every coach faces the challenge of finding the right balance between holding firmly to his plan and adjusting when necessary. For Marsh, a first-time head coach at 37, his system and philosophy have been stress-tested to the extreme as the Sky have stumbled to a 2-7 record to begin his tenure.
He has been emphasizing pace and space, even though he inherited a roster in which Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso — top-10 draft picks from last year — are most effective playing relatively traditional roles in the post. Marsh wants to broaden their games, but that type of development usually takes several offseasons before it truly takes shape.
It’s an especially complicated puzzle for Marsh to solve after losing point guard Courtney Vandersloot to a torn ACL.
Against the Dream, he tried leading scorer Ariel Atkins, predominantly a shooting guard, at the point. He played two wings in Rebecca Allen and Kia Nurse, while Reese and Cardoso stuck mostly to the post.
The unexpected formula led to exactly what he wanted in the first half. The Sky pulled ahead with a 13-0 run and were up 39-38 at halftime thanks to sharp three-point shooting, Atkins pushing them to an aggressive tempo and Reese and Cardoso doing what they do best.
Atkins took to the role well and finished with 12 points, five assists and no turnovers.
“We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do right now, so if that means me running the point, I’ve got to figure it out,” Atkins said. “I’m not trying to become a point guard; I’m trying to do what we need to do to win games. I don’t think I need to change my mindset as a player.”
The Sky have rarely, if ever, looked better this season than they did in the middle of the second quarter. On three consecutive possessions, guard Rachel Banham made a long three-pointer, Reese banked an and-one underneath and punctuated it with a triumphant scream and Allen hit a three to put them ahead 31-23.
It proved unsustainable, but snapshots like that fuel Marsh’s confidence that this eventually will click.
The Sky traded punches with the Dream through three quarters before they wavered and lost control of the game. The Dream opened the fourth with a three-pointer by Rhyne Howard, an acrobatic layup by Jordin Canada through Atkins, Cardoso and Reese and another three by Howard to pull ahead 66-56.
The Sky couldn’t get the deficit down to single digits after that.
Howard caught fire late to tie the league record of nine three-pointers in a game. She went 9-for-19 from long range, including 8-for-12 in the second half.
Reese had 12 points and nine rebounds, and Cardoso scored a team-high 15 points to go with nine rebounds.
Marsh’s job is to sort through both sides of the ledger and find solutions to the issues that undermined a strong start against Atlanta. If he can get more of what the Sky did early in the game and less of the unraveling at the end, he might start getting the wins he needs.