The Portland Fire started fast and went unchallenged for a 75-56 win against the Washington Mystics in the nation\u2019s capital on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Carla Leite hit a mid-range jumper to double up the Mystics 26-13 late in the first quarter, and she wasn\u2019t done. Serah Williams, making her first pro start, came up with a steal and fed the ball ahead to Leite for a layup, extending the margin by the end of the first period.<\/p>\n
Williams converted a layup late in the first half to stretch the lead to 20 points, and the Fire would enjoy a double-digit margin the rest of the way.<\/p>\n
Leite led the Fire with 14 points, while Williams added 12 points on 5 of 6 (83.3%) shooting. Frieda Buhner hit three straight triples in the first half and finished with 9 points.<\/p>\n
Portland (11-14) turned in its best defensive effort of the season, surrendering only 56 points. The Fire held the Mystics to 19 of 65 (29.2%) shooting and just 2 for 21 (9.5%) from behind the arc.<\/p>\n
The win helped Portland close the gap on the playoff pack, pulling to within two games of Washington for the final spot.<\/p>\n
Portland wraps up its five-game road swing Saturday with a 5 p.m. tip-off at first-place Minnesota (19-6).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Portland Fire started fast and went unchallenged for a 75-56 win against the Washington Mystics in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-767900","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\/767900","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=767900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}