Kelsey Plum went 6-for-10 from 3-point range and paced the Los Angeles Sparks with 28 points as they snapped a three-game losing streak with a 91-78 defeat of the visiting Chicago Sky on Sunday.
Plum did the majority of her work in a pivotal third quarter. She knocked down 5 of 6 shots from beyond the arc in the period and 6 of 8 from the floor, pacing Los Angeles (2-3) to a blistering 12-of-17 effort in the quarter.
The burst gave the Sparks a 33-25 advantage in the third and pushed a narrow lead of four points at halftime to double digits for much of the second half.
Chicago (0-3) used its interior game to build a lead briefly in the second quarter. The Sky outscored the Sparks in the paint for the day, 50-28, and leveraged their play inside for an edge of as many as six points.
Chicago could not withstand a 3-point disparity of Los Angeles’ 13-of-27 showing to the Sky’s 4-of-20. Odyssey Sims, Azura Stevens and Sarah Ashlee Barker all went 2-for-4 from deep to back up Plum.
Stevens shot 10-of-14 from the floor overall on the way to 24 points. She also grabbed a team-high eight rebounds and had three assists.
Sims added 12 points and three assists, and Plum doled out eight assists to match teammate Dearica Hamby for the game-high total. Hamby delivered a strong all-around performance with 10 points and six rebounds despite shooting only 3 of 11 from the floor.
Hamby’s last assist came off an offensive rebound when she found Stevens for a point-blank bucket. The sequence capped a 10-4 run as Los Angeles shut the door on Chicago after the Sky pulled to within five points with 7:06 remaining.
Angel Reese, who finished with a double-double of a team-high 13 points and game-high 12 rebounds, pulled Chicago within the two-possession margin with the last of her points. She bounced back from a two-point performance in the Sky’s last outing on Thursday vs. New York, but Reese still managed only a 5-of-11 shooting performance from the field on Sunday.
Kamilla Cardoso added 12 points for the Sky in the loss, and Courtney Vandersloot finished with 11.
–Field Level Media
