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Recap: Sky and Mercury score wins on Friday

The playoff picture hasn’t changed, but there is still a lot of potential room for movement within the teams who already clinched a playoff berth.

By Albert Lee
courtney vandersloot kristi toliver sky mystics wnba
Courtney Vandersloot and the Sky made history in their big win on Friday.
Stewart W. Small

Here are the recaps for Friday’s WNBA games.

Vandersloot leads Sky to 96-87 win over the Sun

Courtney Vandersloot scored 20 points and dished 15 assists in a feel-good win for the Sky on Friday night. In fact, every Sky starter scored in double figures. In fact, it was the first time that a WNBA player ever scored 15 points and dished 15 assists in the same game. Watch her highlights below:

That wasn’t all, though. Vandersloot is certainly known for her assisting, but the whole team got into it. Chicago tied the all-time WNBA record of 35 total assists in one game.

Though the Sun’s five-game win streak came to an end and the team did not have a good showing for most of the game, they did make a strong third quarter comeback, going 28-18 in that period. But it just wasn’t enough. Chiney Ogwumike led Connecticut with 18 points.

Mercury beat Fever 94-74 with balanced attack

After going through a rough patch over the last weeks, Phoenix finally got a solid wire-to-wire win against the last-place Fever. In fact, Phoenix never trailed in this one.

Stephanie Talbot was the Mercury’s standout player, scoring 14 points in 30 minutes. Talbot has been playing heavy minutes in recent weeks since Sancho Lyttle tore her ACL. It took her a little bit to get into a rhythm, but hopefully she can continue to play like this for the rest of this season and in the playoffs.

For the Fever, Kelsey Mitchell and Tiffany Mitchell scored a respective 20 and 17 points off the bench.

Playoff standings update

Everything remains the same as Thursday. The Storm are in first place, followed by the Dream for the two automatic semifinals berths. The Mystics and Sparks hold the third- and fourth-place spots, which come with first-round byes. The Sun and Lynx have the fifth-and sixth-place seeds and home court advantage for the first round. The Mercury remain in seventh place, while the Wings are in eighth.

Given that most teams have four or five games left to play, it’s looking unlikely that the ninth-place Aces will somehow sneak past the Wings, since they are still 2.5 games behind. However, only three games separate the Dream and Lynx for the second through sixth seeds, so there is a lot of time for playoff teams to solidify their seeds over the next week.

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