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The Connecticut Sun are suddenly the gang that couldn`t shoot straight and they`re running out of time to fix it.
They`ve missed more than 50 shots the last two games and face elimination from the Eastern Conference finals Saturday when they host the Detroit Shock, who have a 1-0 lead in the best-of-three series.
Oddsmakers have the Sun listed as 4-point favorites with a total of 139.
``It`s definitely not something that we can`t fix,`` Sun forward Nykesha Sales said. ``We`ll try to make it happen on Saturday.``
Sales, Connecticut`s all-time leading scorer, epitomizes their struggles. She went 1-for-17 in two games during the first-round win over Washington and missed five of six shots against Detroit in Friday`s 70-59 loss. Even Sun coach Mike Thibault is at a loss to explain her slump.
``You tell me what it is - I have no idea,`` Thibault said. ``She had a great week of practice, so I expected her to get her rhythm back, but it didn`t happen. She has to keep shooting - you always want your best player to take the shots - but we need them to go in.``
The Sun managed nicely without Sales for 12 games in the regular season when she was sidelined with a sore Achilles` tendon. Connecticut won 11 games in that stretch as Katie Douglas, the MVP of the WNBA All-Star game, more than picked up the slack.
But Douglas is likely done for the rest of the playoffs because of a hairline fracture in her right foot, sustained in the win Sunday against Washington. She averaged 16.4 points in the regular season. Thibault hasn`t ruled out a return, but she was noticeably limping after a shootaround before Friday`s game.
``She`s had the foot injected to try and dull it,`` Thibault said. ``It`s not an injury that she could make worse by playing but she`s not ready to play. If we get lucky and she can play in one of the games on the weekend, great.``
The Sun, the two-time defending Eastern Conference champs, have not beaten Detroit in four tries this season and will need more than luck to handle Detroit`s dominant post, particularly Cheryl Ford. Her 23 rebounds in the win Friday at The Palace at Auburn Hills were a postseason record. Although she struggled in the opening moments of the game, as 7-foot-2 Margo Dydek grabbed four rebounds in the first 56 seconds, Ford outrebounded her 23-4 in the final 39 minutes.
``The first part of the season is over, this is the playoffs,`` Ford said. ``Connecticut is a great team, they`re going to have their fan base behind them at home and we`re going to have to go in there and play hard. We won there twice in the regular season, but that`s all out the window. This is a whole (different) ball game.``
If the Sun are to push the series to a third game at the Mohegan Sun Arena on Sunday, they also need to slow Deanna Nolan and Katie Smith, who had 21 and 17 points, respectively, in Game 1. Lindsay Whalen and Erin Phillips, playing in place of Douglas, led Connecticut with 13 points each.
``We know that it`s just one game, we have a long way to go, we have to win a game in hostile territory and that`s our focus right now,`` Detroit coach Bill Laimbeer said. ``The next game will be the hardest game we`ve had to play in a long, long time and we`re expecting an all-out war.``
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