Run the Elo board and Portland should be favored. The Fire rate 1392, the Sun rate 1337 — a 55-point gap that, everywhere else on our board this week, points straight at the road team. Instead The Call likes Connecticut. Not by much, but enough that the “worse” team by our own rating system is the pick.
What The Call sees
The Call gives the Sun 54.1%, a “lean” read that’s really a story about rest, not talent. Connecticut is coming off three days off; Portland has two, and arrives having covered roughly 1,395 kilometers with a one-hour time-zone shift for an 11 a.m. Eastern tip — an early start for a team that just crossed a zone. Our rest signal is the only factor that moved the number, adding three points to a home side that Elo alone would have as a slight underdog. Form doesn’t do the Sun many favors otherwise: Connecticut is 3-7 over its last ten and 6-19 on the season, on a two-game skid, while Portland is 4-6 with a one-game winning streak. This is a battle for positioning between two teams well outside the playoff picture, and the model is treating it that way — a real coin flip, not a confident call in either direction.
What could break the pick
Connecticut’s rest edge means less if its rotation is running thin, and it still is — just not in the same shape it looked a day ago. Brittney Griner is questionable with a left quad contusion, in danger of missing a third straight game after going for 29 points and 10 boards two outings back. Aneesah Morrow remains away from the team managing a personal-reasons absence and is working back into game shape rather than starting Tuesday. Saniya Rivers is out for a second straight game with a left ankle sprain. Ashlon Jackson, previously held out under her developmental-contract eligibility rules, is off Tuesday’s injury report entirely — one hole in the rotation just closed. Call it two or three regulars down for a team now 5-18, not the four it looked like on Monday.
Portland isn’t full-strength either, and one absence is worse than it first appeared: Sania Feagin — signed to a developmental deal after her run with the Sparks ended — is now out for the rest of the season with a torn left ACL, a longer-term loss than the roster-eligibility issue it looked like when this preview first went up. Karlie Samuelson is day-to-day with a left middle finger injury, and Sarah Ashlee Barker’s absence still hasn’t been explained by our feed. Two shorthanded teams playing out the string, a rest edge that’s doing more work than the rating gap — that’s how a 55-point Elo favorite ends up an underdog on our board.
The trip
Mohegan Sun Arena sits inside the Mohegan Sun casino resort in Uncasville, Connecticut — not a downtown arena, so plan lodging around the resort corridor rather than expecting a walkable city scene. There’s added reason to make the trip sooner than later: recent reporting has the Sun playing out their final season in Connecticut before an expected relocation, which would make this year’s home slate the last chance to see the franchise at the arena it’s called home since 2003. Full logistics — parking at the casino, where visiting fans actually stay, getting there without a car — are in our Mohegan Sun Arena guide.
