FAIRFAX, Va. \u2014 Brittney Sykes scored 18 points, Shakira Austin had 16 points and eight rebounds, and the Washington Mystics closed on a 12-2 run to beat the short-handed Las Vegas Aces 70-68 on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Jewell Loyd led Las Vegas (9-11) with 20 points while Chelsea Gray added 13.<\/p>\n
Washington trailed 66-58 with 3:45 remaining.<\/p>\n
Austin grabbed an offensive rebound and put it back with 39.8 seconds left to play to give Washington its first lead, 69-68, since it was 15-13 in the first quarter.<\/p>\n
Las Vegas had three chances to take the lead at the other end but came up empty.<\/p>\n
Sykes was fouled with 4.3 seconds left and made a free throw for a two-point lead. After a timeout to advance to midcourt, Jackie Young took an inbounds pass at the top of the key and drove into the lane to attempt a layup, but Austin provided some defensive help under the basket and the ball rolled off the rim.<\/p>\n
Kiki Iriafen added 12 points and eight rebounds for the Mystics (10-10), who won their fourth straight home game.<\/p>\n
Loyd sank a contested 3-pointer just before the halftime buzzer to give Las Vegas a 40-27 lead after closing on a 7-0 run. It was the first 3-pointer for the Aces in 15 attempts.<\/p>\n
Reigning WNBA MVP A\u2019ja Wilson<\/a> did not play for Las Vegas because of an injured right wrist. Wilson, a three-time MVP, was injured in the Aces\u2019 87-78 loss<\/a> at New York on Tuesday night when she fell hard to the floor. She underwent an MRI, but the Aces have not made the results public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FAIRFAX, Va. \u2014 Brittney Sykes scored 18 points, Shakira Austin had 16 points and eight rebounds, and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}