The Portland Fire held their own against the Las Vegas Aces through the first half, but the reigning champs pulled away after the break to take a 105-89 win Thursday night at Moda Center.<\/p>\n
Brandi Carleton hit a short fadeaway shot in the lane, followed by a 3-pointer on her next trip down the floor to put Portland up 28-24 late in the first quarter. Sarah Ashlee Barker hit a layup, followed by a triple of her own for a 42-36 lead midway through the second quarter.<\/p>\n
But Las Vegas finished the first half on a six-point surge to take a 56-50 lead into the locker room.<\/p>\n
The Aces would stay a step ahead the rest of the way.<\/p>\n
Aja Wilson hit a 3-pointer and four minutes into the second half Las Vegas was pulling away with a 16-point lead.<\/p>\n
Portland made one last run at it when Carla Leite swiped a steal that set up Barker for a layup to bring the Fire within four points early in the fourth quarter. But the next seven points went to the Aces and the margin was back to double digits.<\/p>\n
Wilson finished with a game-high 32 points, while Vegas teammate Chelsea Gray went 9-for-13 from 3-point range to add 29 points. Her nine makes from distance were a career high.<\/p>\n
Leite led the Fire with 18 points.<\/p>\n
Portland (6-8) hosts Dallas (8-4) at the Moda Center at 5:30 p.m. Saturday. The Fire are on a four-game losing skid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Portland Fire held their own against the Las Vegas Aces through the first half, but the reigning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-699326","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\/699326","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=699326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}