Tag Archives: Chicago Sky

WNBA Today, 07/12/2012: Speed, shooting and teamwork win the day

Sometimes basketball is an awfully simple game. If you’re quicker than the other guys, if you shoot better than the other guys, if you take better care of the damn ball – most of the time you’re going to win. Three games yesterday in the WNBA, and three times one side had greater team speed, shot the ball better, and had fewer turnovers. Guess which team won in every case?

 

San Antonio Silver Stars 77 @ Chicago Sky 68

  • It’s been ugly for Chicago lately. They started the season 7-1, then Epiphanny Prince broke her foot – and they’ve been 1-6 since. Even the one win needed a desperate fight back to beat Atlanta on the Sky’s own floor. They can’t find Sylvia Fowles enough in the post, and they’re struggling to score without Prince to bail them out. Even with the miserable seasons Washington and New York have had so far, Chicago are starting to drop perilously close to the chasing teams. That playoff spot that looked a virtual certainty a month into the season is back in doubt again.
  • San Antonio, on the other hand, have been on a tear. They’d won seven in a row coming into this game, including all three prior games of the Eastern Conference road swing that this encounter completed. They’d rather the Olympics were in October.
  • The Sky switched back to Ruth Riley in their starting lineup, after going small with Sonja Petrovic in their previous game against Indiana. This despite San Antonio being pretty small themselves with Sophia Young at the 4. San Antonio, of course, aren’t changing anything at this stage.
  • The problem with starting Riley against teams with agile power forwards, is that Fowles has to guard them while Riley takes the opposing center. So Fowles had to chase Young around, and Young took advantage with a couple of early jumpers from the perimeter. Fowles doesn’t really want to follow her out that far.
  • Meanwhile at the other end Young could relax, as her primary defensive responsibility is Riley, who does virtually nothing on the offensive end. Jayne Appel was the one exerting all her energy trying to battle Fowles in the paint.
  • Chicago ran an awful lot of pick-and-rolls and slip-screens with Fowles to try to find her in the paint early on, but it was painfully predictable. It worked once or twice when she managed to seal Appel under her, and she also drew early fouls on Appel, but it’s not like a slew of points were being produced. Continue reading →

WNBA Today, 07/08/2012: Welcome, my friends, to the night of WNBA basketball that never ends

It felt like there was a hell of a lot of WNBA basketball played last night. We’ve had four-game evenings before, but with an early-evening start and late-night finish, and with all the swings and roundabouts that the games took us through, there was a lot to see and talk about. So this time I’m making no promises about keeping things short. Skim-reading is acceptable if you don’t have several hours to dedicate to careful perusal of WNBAlien.

Once again, it’s the Bullet Point Breakdown to try to keep everything moving.

 

Chicago Sky 86 @ Indiana Fever 88

  • Chicago decided to try starting small again, as Pokey Chatman grows increasingly tired of watching Ruth Riley do very little out on the floor. She was replaced in the lineup by Serbian forward Sonja Petrovic. The last time the Sky tried it, they got humiliated on the glass by Phoenix, but with Indiana’s small lineup it was an understandable switch.
  • The Fever started their usual five, but were short a player due to Erin Phillips’s concussion. That left Jeanette Pohlen and Katie Douglas sliding over to cover the point guard duties whenever Briann January needed a rest.
  • The problem with going small against Indiana, is that they can switch practically at will on defense. They want Tammy Sutton-Brown on Sylvia Fowles, but after that pretty much anyone can guard anyone. It makes defense easier.
  • The Sky were trying to trap high on ball-screens, but the Fever simply moved the ball out of the trap, rotated an extra pass or two, and were left with wide open shots when the ball movement beat the defensive rotation.
  • Indiana also drove aggressively in the opening minutes when the opportunities were available, and were quickly in the penalty. So while they missed a lot of the open shots, the parade of free throws made up for it, and Indiana led 25-15 after a quarter.
  • Largely thanks to the perimeter shooting of backups Le’coe Willingham and Shay Murphy, Chicago fought back in the second quarter. Indiana still couldn’t hit a damn thing, which also helped.
  • Indiana continue to bring a double-team from the baseline side essentially every time the ball is entered into the low post. And it consistently works. The offensive player feels her defender on her high shoulder, starts to spin into what she thinks is space on the low side, and turns right into the second defender coming across. It happens repeatedly. One time, Sylvia Fowles read it perfectly, and threw the cross-court pass to the player that the tactic leaves wide open on the weak side – and Murphy knocked down the three. But the Fever will live with that happening occasionally. The next time Chicago tried it, Tamika Catchings read the pass and picked it off.
  • Talking of passes being picked off, it’s amazing how many turnovers the Sky continue to commit. Continue reading →

WNBA Today, 07/07/2012: The Soul of Wit

You know how these articles often seem to start with some declaration about how they’re going to be shorter than usual, then end up being a million words long anyway? Well today’s going to be different. I promise. There were three WNBA games last night; two of them were pretty dull, and the third was essentially invisible to anyone outside Chicago’s Allstate Arena, due to the vagaries of WNBA.com’s LiveAccess portal. So we’re truly, honestly, absolutely going to keep it short today. Really.

We’re also going to the Bullet Point Breakdown, for extra brevity.

 

San Antonio Silver Stars 78 @ Washington Mystics 73

  • The expected fives started the game, meaning Washington actually opened with their best players for a second consecutive game. Matee Ajavon only played 11 minutes in the end, for some reason, but she did start. The Mystics had Natasha Lacy available again on the bench after recovering from concussion-like symptoms.
  • The first half was utterly forgettable. There was rarely more than a few points in it; San Antonio, playing the second half of a back-to-back, looked a little fatigued; and the Mystics are still the Mystics. Michelle Snow did have one of her better halves of the season, for what that’s worth. The Silver Stars led 36-34 at the break.
  • Both teams shot exactly 50% in the first half, which just about summed it up – neither good nor bad, but right in the middle and utterly mediocre. Continue reading →

WNBA Today, 07/02/2012: A Four-game Feast

The basketball gods offered up a little bit of a treat on Sunday. To make up for a few miserable recent days of basketball, we got four games, at least three of which were well worth watching. The schedulers even spaced them out in neat one-hour intervals so you could transition smoothly from one to the next. We here at WNBAlien will pay tribute to the gods’ generosity in our usual way – with detailed analysis of all the action. Chronological order (feel free to skip the Phoenix-Washington game if you’re only interested in potential playoff teams), Bullet Point Breakdown-style – let’s get to it.

 

Minnesota Lynx 84 @ San Antonio Silver Stars 93

  • You’re going to have to excuse me for going all gushy about this game, because not only was there some excellent basketball played, but the chess-match aspects of the battle between head coaches Dan Hughes and Cheryl Reeve were fascinating as well. Just for those who want to hear about the basketball action and not the ins-and-outs of playcalling and rotations, there’ll be a Chess-Match Warning! posted before every entry related to little coaching intricacies.
  • The teams opened with the standard starting fives we’ve come to expect. One long-term injury apiece, with Jessica Adair and Tangela Smith unavailable.
  • Chess-Match Warning! Those with long memories – or who spend an awful lot of time at this website – may recall the twist San Antonio threw at Minnesota in the first round of the playoffs last year. They defended Maya Moore with the far smaller Becky Hammon, practically daring the Lynx to attack that matchup if Moore could come up with a post game. It worked shockingly well, and Minnesota rarely found a way to exploit it. But in the first regular season matchup between these teams in 2012, Hughes rarely used that tactic. This time, the Silver Stars went right for it. From the opening tip, Hammon was on Moore, Shameka Christon on Seimone Augustus, and Danielle Robinson on Lindsay Whalen. The Silver Stars weren’t messing around.
  • At the other end the Lynx wanted it switched around – Augustus defending Hammon, Moore on Christon.
  • Moore pulled down two offensive boards on the opening Lynx possession, suggesting she might be more prepared to take advantage of the Hammon matchup this year. But after Christon went off, with 8 points in the opening three minutes, Moore was benched for Candice Wiggins. Moore had lasted only 3:04 into the game. Continue reading →

WNBA Today, 06/30/2012: Playing away can be fun

Three WNBA games last night, all overlapping each other. Sometimes, the multi-game view in LiveAccess can be very useful. Considering very few of the fans in attendance went home happy, maybe they’d have been better off in front of a computer screen as well. Let’s get right to it, via the Bullet-Point Breakdown.

 

Connecticut Sun 77 @ Washington Mystics 64

  • For the fifth straight game, Sun coach Mike Thibault retained the same starting lineup, with Kalana Greene and Alison Hightower on the perimeter ahead of Danielle McCray. Washington switched things up a little, bringing Shannon Bobbitt in at the point to replace Jasmine Thomas. For whatever reason, Monique Currie continues to come off the bench – so the Mystics still haven’t tried starting all their best players together for a single game this season.
  • Washington were without backup guard Natasha Lacy due to concussion-like symptoms.
  • The game started poorly for Washington, with multiple turnovers and a forced timeout when Bobbitt picked up her dribble and was trapped. It looked like a blowout waiting to happen.
  • Despite those early problems, Bobbitt illustrated quickly that she was an upgrade on Thomas. Bobbitt has drawbacks – she’s tiny, at times she over-dribbles or has tunnel vision, she often can’t finish inside, and she’s not as good a shooter as she thinks she is – but she makes things happen. If the shot-clock’s running down she’ll penetrate and create something, even if it’s something fairly undesirable. Even when the ball’s in someone else’s hands, she’s often pointing and directing everyone as to what they should be doing. She gives this team a pace and directness they haven’t had with their other lead-guard options.
  • After their lead went as high as 11 in the first-quarter (ooh, unintentional Spinal Tap reference), the Sun relaxed a little too much. It had almost been too easy, and they took their foot off the gas. The ball stopped moving as well as it usually does in their offense, their key post pairing of Tina Charles and Asjha Jones faded out of the game, and Washington drifted back into it.
  • Offensive rebounds were helping the Mystics as well, even if they often only led to an extra opportunity to miss. Continue reading →

WNBA Today, 06/28/2012: Day or night, injuries take their toll

Just two games in the WNBA on Wednesday, and unfortunately injuries continue to play a key role in how these contests play out. It’s going to be nice to come back in August and see healthier, more complete rosters take the floor.

The early game was in Chicago, where Indiana arrived for their second Kids’ Day outing in succession. Not the greatest piece of scheduling the world has ever seen. The key injury here was obviously Epiphanny Prince, the Sky guard who looked like she might be making ‘The Leap’ into an elite class in the early weeks of the season. Prince was in attendance, but she was hopping around on crutches, not in uniform. She should be back to start the second half of the season along with the rest of us.

Other team news for Chicago had backup post Le’coe Willingham missing for personal reasons (although she was sat right next to Prince on the bench in street clothes), and Shay Murphy back after missing five games to represent Montenegro in EuroBasket Women qualifiers (they went 4-0, by the way). Sydney Carter had been cut after one game, because for the first time since May 19th, veteran point guard Ticha Penicheiro was in uniform and ready to play. Penicheiro’s recovery from her lingering calf injury meant that the hardship exception used to sign Carter immediately expired.

The Sky had lost their previous two games, both played essentially without Prince. But this was their first game back on their own floor without her, and the first one they might’ve felt capable of winning in her absence. The Fever have been inconsistent lately, with both Tamika Catchings and Katie Douglas struggling to find their jump shots. The Fever were also fairly comfortably beaten the day before in Atlanta, so were carrying the fatigue from a back-to-back. With Indiana 2-0 up in the season series already, Chicago needed this one to avoid conceding the tiebreaker that could come into play at the end of the year.

Both teams started the expected groups – without Prince, Chicago presumably didn’t feel they had the players to go small again to match up with Indiana’s ‘Catch at the 4’ lineup. The early stages featured a stark contrast in styles, with Chicago working hard to feed Sylvia Fowles in the paint, while Indiana fired in perimeter jump shots. Largely speaking, the success rates were fairly similar and the game stayed close.

While both teams diversified their attacks, neither team managed to take control throughout a tight first half. Continue reading →

WNBA Today, 06/24/2012: Favourites all cement their superiority. Just.

Sorry for the lack of post yesterday – it’s been a busy few days in WNBAlien-land. Everything should be back to normal next week. For now, we’re going to catch up on Friday night’s game, as well as everything that happened on Saturday. Everyone who was supposed to win eventually took care of business, but some of them did it with far greater ease than others.

 

San Antonio Silver Stars 76 @ Seattle Storm 82

  • Both teams went with the starting fives we’ve come to expect from recent games. Seattle’s bench was slightly shorter than usual with Victoria Dunlap out again due to concussion – but then, Brian Agler probably wouldn’t have used her anyway.
  • Those starting lineups created a matchup at center between Ann Wauters and Jayne Appel, and once again it didn’t reflect well on Wauters. The Belgian is supposed to be a top-level pivot, one of the better centers around, at least offensively. Appel, on the other hand, has been a huge disappointment for most of her WNBA career, and we’re still waiting on her to prove she even belongs at this level. Wauters makes her look good. It seems like the perfect matchup for Appel, who bodies Wauters just enough to make her uncomfortable, usually without drawing whistles. Wauters should be able to do better against her, but it’s the second time in two games between these teams that the Storm center has done practically nothing.
  • Meanwhile, defensively, Wauters continues to be a conspicuous flaw in the Storm’s structure. Everyone else is starting to work it out and find their old form, but her rotations and mobility are weak, and she gets lost an awful lot. A central part of the Storm starting the season so poorly is that Wauters was meant to be better than this. Replacing Lauren Jackson with her has proven to be a huge step down.
  • As a unit, it didn’t feel like Seattle were playing that poorly in the early stages, but they couldn’t make any shots. The team defense was still largely working as it should, but Jia Perkins came in for San Antonio and actually tickled the twine. The Silver Stars led 17-11 at the end of the first quarter as a result.
  • Danielle Adams offers a balance to Wauters: she can’t move or guard anyone either. In this game, she also couldn’t hit any shots, which essentially made her useless. Continue reading →

WNBA Today, 06/17/2012: Potential Playoff Primers; Prince in Pain

Just two games this Saturday in the WNBA, but both with potential playoff implications down the line. Both could even be early previews of matchups we might see in the 2012 postseason.

The first game to tip off was Chicago’s trip to Indiana. The Sky held the prettier record heading into the game, but Indiana are the team with the history of making and advancing in the playoffs. All this winning is new to Chicago and they’re going to have to keep proving themselves as the season goes along. The Fever had lost three in a row, including a disappointing performance in Washington the night before. They needed a bounce-back performance to stop this losing streak from lingering and causing serious consternation.

Chicago made a switch to their starting five, noticeably trying to match up with this year’s smaller Fever starting lineup, featuring Tamika Catchings at power forward. The Sky slid Swin Cash to the 4 to guard Catchings, bringing Tamera Young in as an extra perimeter player and moving Ruth Riley to the bench. With Riley out there, Sylvia Fowles had been forced to guard Catchings in their previous game against the Fever, which puts added pressure on Big Syl. The change allowed Fowles to take Tammy Sutton-Brown as her initial assignment, and offer her standard help defense wherever else it proved necessary.

Unfortunately for the Sky, the lineup change ultimately proved something of a waste of time. Twice inside the opening three minutes of the game, Shavonte Zellous drove around Courtney Vandersloot, who bumped her as Zellous tried to shoot. Both occasions drew fouls on the Sky point guard, Sloot went to the bench, and Riley was back in anyway. So much for the new lineup.

Despite having their pre-game plans disrupted, Chicago were flowing nicely in the opening quarter. Continue reading →

WNBA Today, 06/14/2012: Parker puts on a show; Sky box out the Storm

So there were two WNBA games taking place last night, one on national television, and one available for live viewing virtually nowhere. So we likely had one of the most watched games of the regular season, and one of the least watched, taking place simultaneously. Fortunately, the one on ESPN2 was the significantly better spectacle. We here at WNBAlien, of course, play no favourites. Full coverage of both games follows, and yes, every minute of both games was witnessed. Just not live, thanks to those silly blackout rules.

Let’s start with the big game on the ‘Worldwide Leader’. Both Connecticut and Los Angeles came into this matchup with only one loss, but due to the teams they’d beaten and some late escapes the Sparks generally weren’t considered as impressive. This was their chance to prove themselves against a real test. LA had guard Alana Beard back in the lineup after she missed their previous game with a hamstring injury, but now had backup post Ebony Hoffman missing thanks to an ankle sprain. Connecticut had no injury issues, and head coach Mike Thibault stuck with Allison Hightower in his starting lineup ahead of Kalana Greene.

It was a scrappy start from the Sun, who were making too many passes that resulted in turnovers or at least tips by the Sparks defenders. LA are a long team – DeLisha Milton-Jones at small forward is far bigger than any of Connecticut’s wings, and Beard is pretty big for a guard as well – and it took the Sun a while to adapt. Meanwhile, although the Sparks were firing away a little too freely from outside, Nneka Ogwumike was doing her typical yeoman’s work on the offensive boards and cleaning up the leftovers.

Out of a timeout only six minutes into the game, we got a taste of what was to come for much of the night. The Sparks came out in their 2-3 zone – a zone which several other teams have found almost pathetically easy to score against this season – and Connecticut immediately gave up a 24-second shot clock violation. Continue reading →

WNBA Today, 11/06/2012: Eastern Conference follows suit

So after an all-West double-header on Saturday night, the schedule threw up a pair of all-East clashes on Sunday afternoon. Just to maintain the symmetry, the Eastern games followed the same pattern – the leaders keep winning, and the stragglers continue to struggle.

We open in New York, where the Liberty came in with a three-game winning streak that had finally given them some hope for the 2012 season. However, their visitors were the Chicago Sky, who arrived as a 5-1 team who’ve been finding a way to win games this season – instead of give them away as they have in previous years.

New York once again had Plenette Pierson in the lineup, despite an injury that’s finally been disclosed as a hyperextended knee. She was ready to give everything she could, but clearly wasn’t playing at 100%. Chicago are at nine players for now, with Ticha Penicheiro still out due to her calf injury, and Shay Murphy in Europe to represent the Montenegrin national team.

The opening stages were worrying for New York, because their ‘white line’ defense was getting picked apart with ease by simple passes over the top to Sylvia Fowles under the hoop. Even when the Sky couldn’t get the ball in to her and fired up jumpers from outside, the fronting involved in the defensive system left Fowles with immediate position on the offensive boards, making her the favourite to put the ball right back in.

The Liberty were at least keeping in touch early thanks to an aggressive Cappie Pondexter – who looked like she was determined to produce against fellow Rutgers alumnus Epiphanny Prince, who’s had the more impressive start to the season – along with some solid interior passing. The problem was that as the first half progressed, New York ran out of ideas against the Chicago defense. Continue reading →