Road Woes Continue for Fire in 101-78 Loss
Portland has now lost four straight games away from home.
Simply put, tonight the Portland Fire couldn’t shoot the basketball. After tallying a troubling 38% field goal clip, the Rose City’s expansion team fell to the Chicago Sky, 101-78.
An early Megan Gustafson three point shot sparked hope for the visitors. With 8:55 to go in the opening period, Emily Engstler added another trey. Soon, the Sky found their groove. The first quarter featured Chicago guard Sydney Taylor’s 5 point effort, and saw Mali international Aicha Coulibaly haul back-to-back buckets inside. After the home team hailed a Natasha Cloud 23 footer with 29.5 left, they took a 22-21 lead into the next quarter.
From there, the game burst open. Chicago won the second, third, and fourth quarters convincingly. At halftime, the Sky led by 7. Following the third quarter, the deficit was 15.
In postgame comments, Fire head coach Alex Sarama quickly diagnosed what went wrong:
“We shot 16 of 41 in the paint, 16 of 31 at the rim. It’s great we’re getting to the rim, but we’ve got to convert. In the paint [we were] 2 of 13, lot of rim twos. [When] you miss those paint shots, it leads to those transition spills, they get an advantage in transition, and I think why they (Chicago) shot so well at the rim tonight is so many of those were 1-on-0 layups in transition.”
At the game’s conclusion, seven Chicago players reached double-digit point totals: Skylar Diggins led the home team with 15 points, while teammates Sydney Taylor and Jacy Sheldon each notched 14, Kamilla Cardoso delivered 13, Azurá Stevens got 11, and Aicha Coulibaly & rookie guard Gabriela Jaquez both earned 10. Megan Gustafson led the Fire with 17 points on 6-12 shooting, but the difference in team shooting proved insurmountable. Chicago out-shot Portland 52% to 38%, got to the free throw line more (23-29 compared to 16-20 for the Fire), won the battle of the boards 38 to 29, and crushed their visitors in the paint 56 to 30.
The loss drops Portland to 8-10, 6th in the Western Conference and 11th in the WNBA playoff race.
Friday evening at 4:30 PM PST, the two sides will rematch in Chicago.
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Matt Bagley is a professional sportswriter and broadcaster with a passion for women’s sports. Outside of work, he cherishes quality time with his birth family, his chosen family, and one very pesky house panther.
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