By Tiffany Williams –
LOS ANGELES — The Connecticut Sun found ways to create extra possessions.
They forced turnovers.
They attacked the paint.
They got 32 points from the bench.
And none of it mattered enough.
Connecticut walked out of Crypto.com Arena with a 77-68 loss to the Los Angeles Sparks, dropping to 9-26 overall and 3-14 on the road after another game in which effort could not overcome brutal shooting.
The numbers tell the story before anything else does.
Connecticut shot just 35 percent from the field.
Four-for-24 from three.
Seventeen percent.
That is not a cold night.
That is an offensive emergency.
Los Angeles shot 51 percent overall and 44 percent from three, and that difference was simply too much for Connecticut to overcome.
The Sun actually opened the game with a 2-0 lead.
That was it.
Los Angeles led for 39 of the 40 minutes.
The Sparks built a lead as large as 22 points and controlled almost the entire night.
Connecticut never led by more than two.
That is domination, even if the final margin ended at nine.
The first quarter set the tone immediately.
Los Angeles dropped 32 points on Connecticut in the opening period while the Sun scored 22.
The Sparks moved the ball, hit shots and punished Connecticut before the game had any chance to settle.
The second quarter gave the Sun a chance to breathe.
Connecticut outscored Los Angeles 14-12 and cut into the deficit before halftime.
Then came the third quarter.
And that was where this game was effectively buried.
Los Angeles hammered Connecticut 22-10 in the period and pushed the lead out of reach.
The Sun responded with 22 points in the fourth and held the Sparks to 11, but by then they were climbing out of a crater.
Connecticut did make the late score look respectable.
It did not make the night competitive enough.
Rickea Jackson Burrell led Los Angeles with 20 points on 8-for-13 shooting, including 2-for-5 from three, while adding three steals.
Nneka Ogwumike gave the Sparks exactly what a veteran star is supposed to give them, finishing with 11 points and 11 rebounds.
Erica Wheeler added 11 points and five assists while knocking down three three-pointers.
Dearica Hamby scored 10 points and grabbed five rebounds.
Los Angeles had balance.
It had efficiency.
It had control.
Connecticut had resistance.
That is not the same thing.
Saniya Rivers led the Sun with 14 points off the bench, shooting 5-for-10 from the field and adding three steals.
Leila Lacan scored 13 points and handed out four assists.
Kennedy Burke finished with 11 points, five steals and three blocks.
Those five steals jump off the page.
Burke was disruptive all night.
Connecticut as a team finished with 15 steals compared with only four for Los Angeles.
The Sun also forced 25 Sparks turnovers.
Twenty-five.
That should be enough to steal a game.
Instead, Connecticut still lost.
That is where the offensive inefficiency becomes impossible to ignore.
The Sun generated 30 points off turnovers and still finished with only 68 total points.
That means they were creating chaos defensively but wasting far too many possessions when the game came back to the half court.
Connecticut took 74 field-goal attempts.
Los Angeles took only 53.
The Sun had 21 more shots.
And still lost by nine.
That is staggering.
When one team gets 74 attempts and the other gets 53, the team with 74 should have a major advantage.
But not when those 74 shots produce only 26 makes.
Los Angeles hit 27 field goals on 53 attempts.
Connecticut needed 21 more attempts to make one fewer basket.
That is the game right there.
The three-point shooting was even worse.
The Sparks hit eight of 18.
Connecticut hit four of 24.
Los Angeles scored 24 points from three.
Connecticut scored 12.
Twelve points of separation from the arc in a nine-point game.
There is your margin.
Connecticut did have success inside.
The Sun outscored Los Angeles 38-36 in the paint.
They also grabbed eight offensive rebounds to Los Angeles’ four and finished with seven second-chance points.
Rae Burrell Beers gave Connecticut strong minutes off the bench, scoring eight points and grabbing seven rebounds.
Gianna Kneepkens added six points and three rebounds.
Ashlon Jackson finished with two points and five rebounds.
But the Sun could not manufacture enough consistent scoring from their starters.
Diamond Miller scored five points in 13 minutes.
Olivia Nelson-Ododa finished with two points.
Carla Leite Leger-Walker scored five.
The starting five produced too many empty trips, and Connecticut spent the rest of the night trying to recover.
Los Angeles also dominated the glass.
The Sparks won the rebounding battle 40-30 and grabbed 36 defensive rebounds.
That matters when Connecticut was missing as many shots as it did.
The Sun had opportunities.
The Sparks kept finishing possessions.
Connecticut also got almost nothing in transition.
Los Angeles scored 13 fast-break points.
The Sun scored two.
So even though Connecticut created turnovers, it did not consistently convert those turnovers into easy offense.
That is another painful contradiction from this game.
The Sun were more disruptive.
The Sparks were more efficient.
Efficiency won.
Los Angeles turned the ball over 25 times and still controlled 98 percent of the game.
That should be impossible.
It wasn’t.
The Sparks were simply too good when they actually got shots up.
Connecticut was not.
Cam Brink gave Los Angeles seven points in only 12 minutes, going a perfect 3-for-3 from the floor.
Azura Stevens Cannon added three points and five rebounds.
Los Angeles got contributions across the roster while protecting a lead it had almost from the opening tip.
Connecticut’s defense did enough to create a path back.
Its offense kept closing that path.
The Sun finished with 16 assists against 13 turnovers.
That is respectable.
They forced Los Angeles into a much worse assist-to-turnover ratio.
Still, basketball remains brutally simple.
You have to make shots.
Connecticut did not.
The Sun finished 22-for-50 on two-point attempts, a much more respectable 44 percent.
But once they stepped behind the arc, everything fell apart.
Four makes.
Twenty misses.
You cannot consistently survive that kind of shooting against anybody, and certainly not against a team shooting over 50 percent from the field.
This game was not lost because Connecticut lacked effort.
The Sun forced turnovers all night.
They battled back in the fourth quarter.
They got production from the bench.
They attacked the paint.
They created extra shots.
But effort does not erase inefficiency.
And 35 percent from the field with 17 percent from three is not winning basketball.
The attendance was 10,878 at Crypto.com Arena.
Those fans watched Los Angeles take control early, survive Connecticut’s defensive pressure and finish the night with a nine-point victory that never really felt as close as nine.
The Sun can point to the 15 steals.
They can point to the 30 points off turnovers.
They can point to the 32 bench points.
All of those things are real.
So is the final score.
Los Angeles Sparks 77.
Connecticut Sun 68.
And the biggest problem remains painfully obvious.
Connecticut can create all the chances it wants.
If the shots do not fall, none of those chances matter.