PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) \u2014 Shay Ciezki had 22 points off the bench and the Phoenix Mercury rallied in the fourth quarter for a 94-91 victory over the Portland Fire on Thursday night in the teams\u2019 first game back from the FIBA World Cup break. <\/p>\n
Emily Engstler had 21 points and five 3-pointers for the expansion Fire, who have lost five of their last six. Holly Winterburn added 18 points. <\/p>\n
Both teams have been eliminated from playoff contention.<\/p>\n
The Fire (16-25) were without Carla Leite, who won the silver medal with France at the World Cup, as well as Megan DiLeo, who played for third-place Spain. Frieda Buhner, with hosts Germany, and Amy Okonkwo, captain of Nigeria, played. <\/p>\n
The Mercury (15-26) were without Kahleah Cooper, who won gold with the United States, along with Valeriane Ayayi (France) and Kyara Linskens (Belgium). The Mercury was also missing Kelsey Plum, who has a left calf injury. <\/p>\n
Bridget Carleton did not play for the Fire because of an ankle injury. <\/p>\n
Phoenix pulled ahead in the fourth, going up 82-79 after Alyssa Thomas hit a pair of free throws with 4:58 left. Sami Whitcomb\u2019s pullup jumper extended the Mercury\u2019s lead. <\/p>\n
Down 90-88, the Fire got the ball on a Mercury shot clock violation, but Karlie Samuelson missed a 3-point attempt with 21.4 seconds left and Natasha Mack made free throws for Phoenix. <\/p>\n
Winterburn\u2019s 3-pointer for Portland with 4.3 left cut gap to 92-91, and the Mercury closed it out with free throws. <\/p>\n
Up next <\/p>\n
Mercury: Visit Dallas on Saturday. <\/p>\n
Fire: Play Friday at Golden State. <\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full WNBA coverage here <\/p>\n
Anne M. Peterson, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) \u2014 Shay Ciezki had 22 points off the bench and the Phoenix Mercury rallied in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-900190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}