This one wasn’t close.
Let’s say that Tuesday night didn’t go as planned. The Washington Mystics lost to the Los Angeles Sparks, 99-80 on the road.
Just weeks ago, the Washington Mystics two new All-Stars were announced: Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen. As the All-Star game nears the expectations from these two players have increased. Tonight was definitely not of the nights they delivered.
Citron went for 3-for-9 and Iriafen for 4-from-10, each for 8 points. Sykes also had a forgettable night with 2-from-7 for 8 points. That is definitely not going to get it done against the L.A. Sparks, in L.A.
However statistics aside, the story of the game was the second quarter. After ending the first quarter only down by 4, 22 – 26, things looked not so bad. The second quarter the Mystics offense was completely M.I.A. The Mystics scored 12 points in the whole quarter while their defense (if you may call it that) was a complete wash to the tune of allowing 33 (!) points by the Sparks. From that point on trash time commenced.
Citron did score 2-from-5 from deep and the team as a whole shot a decent 8 from 21 from downtown. The Mystic’s downfall was however turning the ball over 17 times (to 10 of L.A.). The stat sheet does lie a bit too — many of the categories are fairly comparable (L.A. shot 9-from-23 from deep, for instance), but the true story is that M.I.A. second quarter. The Mystics won the second half, but that was merely a garbage-time stat-padding mini run.
A bright point was to see Aaliyah Edwards come off the bench for 13 points in just 14 minutes. Shakira Austin led the Mystics scorers with 16 points.
For the Sparks, Hamby led the way with 26 points in just 26 minutes. Allemand played that old-school point-guard game with 3 points and 10 assists.
The Mystics next play the … Sparks… again, at home, next Tuesday, after the All-Star Break.