UNCASVILLE, Conn. — The Sky did not just need a win Monday night against the Sun.
They needed to bury a team.
They needed to show that, yes, they might be stuck near the bottom of the WNBA standings and still searching for a way out of their early-season mess, but they were not in the same category as the Sun.
The Sun entered Monday 2-15, carrying a seven-game losing streak and the reality of a franchise in transition. They are experimenting with young players, slogging through their final season in Connecticut and preparing for their move to Houston in 2027.
This was the team the Sky were supposed to thrash.
Instead, they were run out of Mohegan Sun Arena in a 92-63 loss that looked every bit as bad as the score suggested.
They played rushed. Disconnected. Totally outmatched by a team that had won twice all season before Monday.
“We were in a hole, and we just kept going down,” guard Sydney Taylor said after the game.
It was a long way to fall after several almost-wins against top teams made it look like they were on the cusp of a breakthrough.
The Sky had pushed the Dream to the brink. They took the Fever to overtime. They almost knocked off the Liberty. They had the Wings beaten until they didn’t.
Those losses hurt, but they also suggested the Sky might be on the cusp of something.
Monday suggested otherwise.
Against the Sun, they were back to square one.
None of what had inspired the last two weeks traveled with them to Uncasville. The ball movement vanished. The shot-making dried up.
The Sky shot 40% from three-point range over their previous four games. Monday, they shot 13.3% from beyond the arc — and 23.3% from the field.
Skylar Diggins, the team’s leading scorer, did not make a shot.
Kamilla Cardoso, who had found a second gear two nights earlier with 26 points, picked up two early fouls and spent the rest of the night playing on her heels.
But this was not just a Diggins or Cardoso problem. It was not just a shooting problem. It was not just bad officiating or a tired team or one of those nights.
The Sky could not even muster an earnest spurt that sometimes softens a loss. There was no third-quarter push, no brief run to make the Sun uncomfortable, no stretch where the game hinted at becoming something other than what it was.
By the end of the third quarter, the Sky trailed 70-44. They had as many turnovers as made baskets.
That about captured the night.
“We just got to be better,” Cardoso said. “We got to punch first. I feel like today they punched us first, so we got to be more aggressive and punch them first.”
Coach Tyler Marsh has spent much of this season preaching the details: execution, ball movement, cleaning up the glass. Those kinds of details do often decide close games, and the Sky have lost plenty of those.
But Monday was not about the details. It was about the whole picture.
The Sky are now 4-12. They have lost six straight. Their remaining games this month are against the Fire twice and the Aces.
That gives them two more chances this week to prove Monday was an anomaly before the schedule turns cruel again.
But the Sky looked pretty far from a breakthrough Monday night.
They looked like a team bottoming out.