In a game that saw 14 lead changes, Portland found a way to stay a step ahead down the stretch to score an 83-82 home win over the Connecticut Sun on Monday night.<\/p>\n
Trailing 75-74 as the clock ticked under two minutes to play, Portland\u2019s Bridget Carleton poked the ball loose and sent a pass ahead to Emily Engster, who dodged a defender at the rim and put two points high off the backboard to give the Fire the lead.<\/p>\n
Portland kept the pressure up with Sarah Ashlee Barker swiping a steal and converting a three-point play at the other end to extend the lead to 79-75 with 1:02 to play.<\/p>\n
Connecticut\u2019s Hailee Van Lith hit back-to-back shots to tie the score, but Portland\u2019s Sug Sutton drove the lane and hit a short floater to put Portland ahead for good. Carleton hit a pair of free throws to make it 83-79 with 0:10 left.<\/p>\n
The Sun hit a late 3-pointer, and the home crowd endured some nervous moments after Portland was hit with an offensive foul for a turnover with two ticks on the clock.<\/p>\n
Connecticut fired an inbounds pass just past halfcourt, but a desperation shot was far off the mark as the buzzer sounded.<\/p>\n
Carleton and Barker shared the team lead for Portland with 18 points apiece, while Engster added 15.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to win at home every game,\u201d Carleton said. \u201cThese fans are incredible, and they brought the energy for 40 minutes. It was an exciting one.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Fire honored its original members from the 2000 to 2002 seasons during halftime, and those players cheered on Monday\u2019s victory from courtside seats.<\/p>\n
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Portland (2-2) heads off on its first road trip of the season — a three-game stretch that starts at 4 p.m. Wednesday at the Indiana Fever. Connecticut remains winless five games into the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a game that saw 14 lead changes, Portland found a way to stay a step ahead down…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-651800","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\/651800","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=651800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}