Washington at Las Vegas

We had Washington's number in this same building Monday, backing a seven-game winning streak into Las Vegas, and it snapped there, the Mystics falling by ten to end the run. Vegas gets another crack at the same team tonight, but not with the same roster. Cheyenne Parker-Tyus is out with a concussion, Dana Evans is out with a leg injury, Kierstan Bell is out for personal reasons, and Justine Pissott is questionable with a leg issue of her own, four bodies missing or banged up from a team that was already inconsistent before the injury list piled up. Two days before that Washington loss, the Aces were blown out by forty points in New York, 111-71, the kind of collapse that doesn't happen to a team playing complete basketball. Vegas is 23-11 and scores at a 90.9 clip, but the margin behind that number is a modest 3.6 points a night, not the kind of gap a shorthanded team should be laying tonight. Washington answered Monday's loss the way a good team does: Iriafen grabbed 13 rebounds in that game alone, and the Mystics are 19-13 and 7-3 over their last ten. A thinned-out favorite giving away that many points to a team that just proved it belongs in this fight is exactly the number I want tonight. Take the Mystics as my WNBA Game of the Week.