The Portland Fire erased a 12-point second half deficit to beat the Seattle Storm 94-89 in the renewal of the Northwest rivalry Wednesday night at the Moda Center.<\/p>\n
Bridget Carleton found herself with the ball in the corner of the court, gave a pump fake to move her defender, then swished a 3-pointer to pull the Fire within a bucket as the clock ticked under five minutes.<\/p>\n
A few minutes later, Carla Leite was shoved out of the way while chasing an offensive rebound. Seattle was hit with a flagrant foul, and Leite sank a pair of free throws. Portland got the ball back, and Leite drove the lane before sending a pass out to the corner where Megan Gustafson sank a 3 to tie the game with 2:04 to play.<\/p>\n
Portland took the lead on its next trip downcourt when Emily Engstler hit a baseline fadeaway shot for the go-ahead points.<\/p>\n
After a Seattle turnover, Engstler dribbled into the lane before whipping a pass to the perimeter where Carleton hit her seventh 3 of the night to secure the win. She finished 7-for-13 (53.8%) from behind the arc, matching the franchise record for triples in a game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe basket looks big when you hit your first three, and my teammates found me in some great spots,\u201d Carleton said.<\/p>\n
She finished with a team-high 24 points.<\/p>\n
Seattle was held scoreless over the final 2:30 of the game, giving up a turnover and missing their last four shots.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never seen a team like this, best net defense in the fourth quarter in the league and that\u2019s a credit to them,\u201d Fire coach Alex Sarama said.<\/p>\n
Leite had 20 points and 10 assists for Portland, while Karlie Samuelson added 10 points off the bench.<\/p>\n
Portland (8-9) starts a four-game road trip Wednesday, June 24, in Chicago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Portland Fire erased a 12-point second half deficit to beat the Seattle Storm 94-89 in the renewal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-710973","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\/710973","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=710973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}