UNCASVILLE, CT – Already the team has faced and defeated the final team on their road to a 2021 WNBA championship, doing so at Wintrust Arena on May 31st.
After beating the Phoenix Mercury in that contest, the Sky will now face the team they knocked off just before them in the playoffs last fall.
James Wade’s team is headed to Mohegan Sun Arena on Friday night to face the Connecticut Sun for the first time during the 2022 season at 6 PM. It will be the first of four match-ups between the foes as they once again battle for the top spot in the WNBA standings.
Last September and October, the Sky defeated the Sun in four games to clinch a spot in the WNBA Finals for the second time in team history. They’d go onto defeat the Mercury in four games for their first league title.
Right now the Sun are 2 1/2 games ahead of the Sky in the standings though they’ve played two more contests than the reigning league champions. Connecticut is 10-3 on the season and goes into the match-up on Friday night on a four-game winning streak.
The Sky could have had the same thing, but their rally on Wednesday night against the Mystics in Washington DC came up just a little short. Trailing by 12 coming into the fourth quarter, the Sky made a furious late rally to get within two in the closing seconds.
Candace Parker had a shot for the tying hoops at the buzzer but her layup was off the mark, with some on the Sky upset she wasn’t given a foul call, as the Mystics held on for an 84-82 victory. The four losses for the Sky on the season have been relatively close, with another decided by three points and two by a margin of seven points.
“We’ve been in every game we’ve lost,” said Parker on Wednesday. “I just think it’s the moments in the middle that we have to fix. Those are the possessions that I think we can take of that we want at the end. For me, personally, we beat a great team twice, we were hoping to get a third one, but there again, it’s still 11 games in and we have so much room for improvement, so I just looked to that.”
They’ll hope to start a new streak against a team they know all too well from their run to a championship last fall.