The Chicago Sky entered the playoffs last season for the first time in franchise history. This year they won their first game and series in franchise history defeating the Atlanta Dream in comeback fashion 81-80 on Tuesday night. The Sky advance to the Eastern Conference Finals where they will face the Indiana Fever.
Down 17 to start the fourth quarter, Elena Delle Donne took matters into her own hands leading the Sky to the biggest fourth-quarter comeback in WNBA playoff history. Delle Donne scored 17 of her 34 points in the final period, including the winning jumper with 8.4 seconds left, as the Sky rallied from 20 points down.
”I just know that when we were in huddles and I was talking to the team, everyone had that look in their eye like we were not done yet – we were not ready to go home,” Delle Donne said. ”So I was very confident. … I knew we were playing pretty good defense, just not doing the little things like finishing with a rebound, finishing with a contested shot.”
The Dream shot 1 for 6 from the field with three turnovers during Chicago’s big run before Erika de Souza and Angel McCoughtry made baskets 20 seconds apart to put the Dream up four with 2:14 to go.
”I think we got away from what we were doing well,” Dream coach Michael Cooper said. ”I thought the execution of our offense kind of went out the window a little bit. We started to take some quick shots and some bad shots and then our defense kind of got away from us.”
De Souza scored 18 points and McCoughtry had 17 for the Dream, who reached the WNBA Finals in three of the last four seasons.
The Sky will visit the Fever for the opener of the East finals on Saturday.
