For the second straight game, a crafty forward picked the Sky (3-3) apart.
Three days earlier, Wings Jessica Shepard posted her second career triple-double against the Sky. On Saturday at Wintrust Arena, it was Lynx (4-3) forward Natasha Howard’s turn. She scored 22 points in the first half alone, and the Lynx walked away with an 85-75 win.
“Our physicality wasn’t there at all in the first half,” Sky coach Tyler Marsh said. “They really hurt us on the offensive glass. There’s no excuse there because in many ways they have some lack of size as well. They played harder than we did in the first half.”
That effort was exactly what Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve demanded. In their first matchup last week — which the Sky won — Reeve thought her team wasn’t ready for Chicago’s scrappy defense.
“We looked at that game on both ends of the floor and just felt like our level of compete wasn’t the appropriate level to try to combat the aggressiveness, the physicality and the swipes,” Reeve said. “We weren’t ready.”
She even said that the Sky were the better team at that point.
Saturday, the Lynx adjusted. Their ball movement flourished. And Howard was unstoppable, missing only two of 12 shots in the first half. Lynx point guard Olivia Miles created opportunities for her, finding her repeatedly in the pick-and-roll.
“We messed up some coverages early on, so just dialing in and watching a little bit of film at halftime, and coming back and playing hard,” Sky guard Syndey Taylor said.
The Sky did tighten up defensively in the second half, holding Howard to four points after the break. But the damage was done, especially because they couldn’t generate much offense.
The Sky shot only 31.5% from the field and even worse from 3-point range.
“I think when we go on lulls, there’s a direct correlation of the ball not moving,” Marsh said. “I think we have a tendency to go one-on-one at times.”
Taylor provided a bright spot, hitting a pair of 3-pointers and getting to the line twice in the second half. The rookie finished with a career-high 11 points.
But it was too little too late. The Lynx looked clearly like the better team this time around.
Finally, Stevens returns
In theory, Azurá Stevens is exactly the player the Sky need to defend versatile bigs like Howard. The 6’6 forward missed the first five games recovering from a knee injury and returned Saturday to a nice ovation.
She finished with six points and a block, and helped spark a late third-quarter, early fourth-quarter run that cut a double-digit deficit to three.
“I’ve worked really hard to get to this point,” Stevens said. “Sometimes in the day-to-day grind you get caught up on different things and can get frustrated, but to have this moment today was really special.”
The team is being cautious with her workload for now. She played only 16 minutes on Saturday.
Counting Coulibaly’s games
Sky rookie development player Aicha Coulibaly was not activated for Saturday’s game. The short-handed Sky have to be careful — development players are eligible for only 12 of the 44 regular-season games, and Coulibaly has already used four of them.