Sky's playoff hopes in jeopardy

The streak ends here. And quite possibly, so do the Sky's playoff chances.

The kicker? It didn't have to be this way.

After leading every moment of the first three quarters, the Sky should have beaten the Seattle Storm on Thursday night in front of an announced crowd of 3,829 at the UIC Pavilion. Instead, a fourth-quarter collapse allowed the Storm to sneak away with a 70-62 victory.

That ends a franchise-best three-game winning streak and drops the Sky to 11-18 on the season - 3 games behind the Indiana Fever for the fourth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.

From here on out, hopes for a Sky playoff berth shrink substantially with each loss.

Fourth-place Indiana needs to win three of its final five games to eliminate the Sky, which also has five games remaining, from the playoff mix. Seattle, meanwhile, is playoff-bound. The Storm maintains its spot atop the Western Conference with a 20-10 record.

"This is very frustrating," said Sky guard Jia Perkins, who poured in a game-high 22 points just days after being named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week. "We had control of the game until the fourth quarter. That's what hurts the worst."

Seattle took its first lead of the game at 8:52 of the fourth quarter on a 3-pointer by star guard and Olympic gold medalist Sue Bird.

Bird, who finished with a team-high 19 points, later came up with some even bigger daggers-through-the-heart.

The teams jockeyed back and forth for the next six minutes until Bird hit another huge 3-pointer with about three minutes left. Bird struck again on Seattle's next possession by feeding teammate Yolanda Griffith the perfect pass under the basket. Griffith's layup gave Seattle a 66-62 lead with 2:22 left.

After a Sky timeout, Seattle's defense held and then Bird put the nail in the coffin with a long jumper to push the lead to 68-62 with 1:07 to play.

"Bird lit us up," said Sky forward Candice Dupree, who had a quiet night with 7 points, about 10 below her average. "If she wasn't scoring, she was getting the ball to wide-open teammates. We did a great job on the defensive end in the first half, but then we just started having these mental lapses in the fourth quarter."

"The worst part is being up the entire game and then just watching the lead kind of dwindle away. We just couldn't finish it out."