Time to ponder another Sky demise

Two days.

That’s all the time Sky coach Pokey Chatman is giving herself to be away from basketball over the next month.

“When you leave on a sour note,” Chatman said, “your mind won’t stop working.”

Missed opportunities in the Sky’s latest collapse, an 80-78 overtime loss on Friday night at Allstate Arena to the Connecticut Sun, will likely play over and over again in Chatman’s mind as she settles in to the WNBA’s monthlong Olympic break.

The Sky blew a 13-point fourth-quarter lead to drop its fourth game in a row and its eighth in the last nine games. That all but negates the Sky’s all-time best start of 7-1, which is where the team was on June 16 when star guard Epiphanny Prince went down with a broken foot.

Now 8-9, the Sky sits in fourth place in the Eastern Conference. First-place Connecticut, meanwhile, improves to 15-4.

“I know they feel bad,” Chatman said of her players’ mental state. “But at some point, you’ve got to do something about it.”

At times, the Sky has found ways to fill Prince’s shoes. Players such as Tamera Young, Shay Murphy and Courtney Vandersloot have all put together big outings. In fact, Vandersloot had the best game of her career against Connecticut, rolling up a career-high 22 points to go along with 8 assists.

But rarely has everything and everyone clicked at the same time.

In fact, against Connecticut, the opposite seemed true, especially in crunch time. Nothing seemed to be working for the Sky.

The Sun scored 5 of its 14 overtime points off of 3 Sky turnovers. Meanwhile, when the Sky had the chance to win the game in regulation on a final shot, Vandersloot turned the ball over in the corner with 2.9 seconds left.

“All losses are tough,” Vandersloot said. “But we had them. We were doing the things that put us up most of the game. It’s us. We gave it away. You’ve got to credit them. They played hard and executed down the stretch. We need to execute.”

Center Sylvia Fowles, who leaves with teammate Swin Cash for London today to join the U.S Olympic team, finished with 20 points and 10 rebounds for the Sky. Young added 14 points and Murphy had 13.

Tina Charles, also a member of the Olympic team, had a game-high 25 points for Connecticut, which also got 19 points out of former Sky forward Mistie (Bass) Mims.

“It’s just depressing, losing eight games like this,” Young said. “This is our job, but it’s supposed to be fun and this isn’t fun right now.”