Mystics unable to conjure up a playoff victory

UNCASVILLE, Conn. (Map, News) - The Washington Mystics overcame significant foul trouble and poor shooting but came up just short Sunday afternoon. The Connecticut Sun downed the Mystics, 68-65, sweeping the first-round, best of three series in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

Mystics’ guard Alana Beard, coming off a disappointing nine-point, 3-of-15 shooting performance in Game One on Friday, led all scorers with 21 points, but missed an open three pointer in the final seconds that would have tied the game.

“I thought [the last shot] was going in,” Beard said. “We gave it all that we had and the only bad part is that we came up on the short end of the stick.”

Guard Katie Douglas led the Sun (26-8, 2-0) with 16 points but limped off the court late in the fourth quarter. A team spokesman said Douglas injured her right foot, not her already-injured right calf, and she is scheduled to have an MRI today. Sun coach Mike Thibault said her status for the Eastern Conference final match-up against the Detroit Shock is unknown.

Foul trouble plagued Washington (18-16, 0-2 playoffs). The Mystics were called for 32 fouls to the Sun’s 22, and resulted in a 38-17 shot advantage from the charity stripe. Mystics’ center Chasity Melvin fouled out with 2:23 left in the game and three other Mystics had five fouls apiece. Mystics coach Richie Adubato said that his team was forced to shuffle players in and out because of their foul trouble.

“The [foul] numbers are outrageous,” Adubato said. “You can’t beat a team this good with that kind of discrepancy.”

The loss is the Mystics’ eighth in their last nine trips to Connecticut, and ends a season that began with great promise for the team. The Mystics jumped out to a 7-3 record and a share of the Eastern Conference lead with the Sun in mid-June. But injuries to Beard and forward DeLisha Milton-Jones halted the team’s rise and led to the fourth-seed in the Eastern Conference. Milton-Jones said the loss was disappointing for the team but she sees this season, in which the team had a franchise-record 18 wins, as a good building block for the team’s future.

“We didn’t finish [the season] off the way we would have liked to, but we did finish on a positive note by making the playoffs and getting a step better that we were last year,” Milton-Jones said.

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