Fowles, Sky roar back down the stretch
SAN ANTONIO -- Sylvia Fowles scored 23 points and grabbed 12 rebounds, and the Chicago Sky overcame an 8-point deficit in the final 3:10 to beat the San Antonio Silver Stars 75-72 on Saturday night in WNBA action.
Jia Perkins scored 15 points for the Sky (12-12), which has won four of its last five games.
"I'm happy we won, it was a tough game," said Sky coach Steve Key. "The Silver Stars played really well tonight. We knew they were going to be tough at home. Last week when we played them we knew we weren't 27 points better than them and they showed that today. They came out with a lot of fire and they made it a hard job for us."
Michelle Snow and Roneeka Hodges each scored 13 points to lead the Silver Stars (8-14).
I think we just had poor execution, obviously," said Silver Stars coach Sandy Brondello.
"And (the Sky) has Sylvia Fowles and they just get the ball to her. We just lost a little bit of focus. We were supposed to be trapping [Fowles] and if you come too late with Sylvia Fowles, she's already at the basket. And she got some pretty easy baskets. They made shots down the stretch and we didn't."
Perkins' fastbreak layup tied the score at 72-72 with 1:15 left. After the Silver Stars missed 2 shots, Perkins hit a jumper in the lane to give the Sky (12-12) its first lead in the fourth quarter.
"I think we just had to play with a sense of urgency," Perkins said. "They went on their run and basketball is a game of runs. We hit ours out of the timeout and we fixed some defensive positions that we were letting get away from us. They were getting a lot of easy baskets and once we stopped that we were able to execute on offense."
"The thing about it is that she's a capable scorer," Key said about Perkins. "If you want to rank her, she's not one of the top two or three in the league, but she very capable with her steady jump shot. We were trying to free her up and she got free and we were able to capitalize."
Snow missed a short shot in traffic on the Silver Stars' next possession, and Shay Murphy hit a free throw to put the Sky up by 3 with 15.6 seconds remaining.
Hodges missed a potential tying 3 and Fowles grabbed the rebound as time expired.
"The only thing going through my head was we needed to get stops and get scores," Fowles said.
"At that point they were getting what they wanted on the inside and they were doing what they wanted on the outside. Then my whole mindset changed. We had come too far to lose so we had to do something."