Mid-week weekend wrap-up…yeah, it’s late…

First of all, the Sky got CRUSHED by the Atlanta Dream on Saturday…

Preview || Box Score || Recap || Photo Gallery

Highlight of the game was Shay Murphy’s pre-game player address to the crowd. Seriously, that was the most energy we saw out of anyone the entire night…

The post-game quotes from this game were great…

From the Chicago Tribune (Coach ’embarrassed’ by Sky’s play in loss to Dream)…

“We should be embarrassed for (this) kind of play” Sky coach Steven Key said. “The hard part is that we know that’s not us as a team. That’s not the way we practice, that’s not the way we played all season long.

“We owe it to the fans who’ve come to support us … to never have a showing like that again.”

From the Daily Herald (Sky rolls over, plays dead in loss)…

“This is an emotional drainer and you get upset, agitated,” said Fowles, who scored 14 points, second to rookie guard Epiphanny Prince’s team-high 18 points. “Tonight we came out and played like boo-boo. I thought we were going to be ready to play.

“It’s gut-checking time. You’ve got to think about what the (heck) you’re here for. This is your job. You get paid to do a job. My thing is I want to finish strong. I want to win. When that’s not the case and we’re playing like this, it’s very, very agitating.”

From the Chicago Sun Times (Sky can’t touch this one)…

”After a game like that, I need a hug,” Sky coach Steven Key said after getting a big one from his 2-year-old daughter, Sidney.

”We know this was not us as a team. This is not the way we practice or the way we’ve played all season. We owe it to the fans never to have a showing like that again. We know we’re out of the playoffs, but we never should let that happen again.”

”We had no energy, no nothing,” Fowles said. ”It was very embarrassing, and we owe our fans an apology.”

I followed the Sky’s lead and checked out of this game early. I watched about the first 5 minutes then found other ways to entertain myself while they got their butts kicked. Sounds bad, I know…but “entertaining myself” included missing most of the 3rd quarter to re-new my season tix. See, I’m not THAT bad of a Sky fan 🙂

And yeah, that’s all I have to say about that game. Moving on…

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TAILGATING! The pre-game tailgate party was fun. Good food. Good people. Good times. You can find some cool pics from the tailgate posted by ‘cavery’ over on the Chicago Sky Talk message board.

Here’s a pic from Sports Page Magazine…

Oh, and I should also mention that I saw Kraayeveld at Target while buying soda for the tailgate. LoL, random, I know 🙂

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On Sunday, the Sky held a cool event at Gino’s East. All of the players and coaches were there acting as waiters, waitresses, bartenders, hosts and hostesses. It was cool. Some highlights for me…

— Catherine Kraayeveld was cool. She was helping out in our section for most of the evening. She was really friendly and didn’t curse us out even when SOMEONE made a absolute ridiculous request (yeah, I’m looking at you, jscott! lol ;-)). It’s pretty cool that I can now say that I’ve ordered food and gotten drinks from Catherine Kraayeveld. Surreal.

— We also met Christi Thomas who was funny, super nice and may be my favorite player on this team now. She came over to talk to us a few times and was really cool. Surprisingly, she said that she has never had deep dish pizza. We tried to convince her to get some while she was, ya know, at Gino’s East. She didn’t, but promised that she would get some before she left Chicago. I’m gonna have to check back with her on Twitter about that in a few days 🙂 Anyway, I guess I can stop giving her a hard time on this blog about wearing #4…Christi is cool peeps.

— Also met Jia. Quick convo…basically just saying hi and whatnot. She was cool too.

— I believe Shay also stopped by our table to say hi. She’s cool peeps too.

— It never crossed my mind to take pics. Too wrapped up in the moment, I guess 🙂

— Overall, I thought it was a great event. It really allowed fans to meet and get to know the players in a really comfortable, laid back environment. I’m usually really, really shy when it comes to meeting the players and stuff but I was totally cool with this. Besides maybe the open practices, I think this was my probably favorite Sky event ever.

— If they were to do this again next year (…hopefully they do!), the only suggestion I have to improve it would be to try to seat all the Sky fans in the same area. Gino’s East is BIG and has about 3 different dining sections inside as well as outdoor seating. Everyone was a bit spread out. They should have tried to seat all the Sky people over by the bar area and leave the rest of the restaurant to the regular patrons.

Some pics from ChicagoSky.net…

That's me in the black t-shirt in the booth behind Catherine 🙂

I totally shoulda bought a drink from TYoung...

Coach Key taking pizza orders over the phone...NICE!

Mistie bartending...shoulda gotten a drink from her too!

Shay taking care of the outside dining room...

Dang, I guess all the fun was at the bar! Shoulda gotten a drink from Canty too!

Epiphanny helping out with the phones...

Overall, it was a really fun weekend with the Sky! The only downer was the actual game 😦 …but the Sky redeemed themselves against the Dream a few days later so…WHATEVA!

~ Chicago Sky Hoops ~

~ by audsquad on August 18, 2010.