On the Road Again....

Let's take a look at the last 20 WNBA games: the home team has beaten the visiting team 16-4. (Atlanta was one of those visiting teams that escaped the axe.) '

The 20 games before those 20 games, the home team has won 14-6. (Once again, Atlanta got a win on the road.) I don't want to look at home vs. away win percentage for every team in the WNBA, but I suspect that the grind of the WNBA season is really starting to get to a lot of teams. Just looking at the June results, it seemed that the visting teams had a better chance in June than they did in July. Furthemore, from looking at the Hollinger Rankings, there's a lot of parity in the WNBA and just being the home team can be a decisive advantage.

As we've learned from following the Dream, during the Chicago game, the road Dream didn't even have time for a practice, just a walkthrough. With road teams having to play back to back games and with everyone exhausted it's a good time to be at home in the WNBA.

Our next trip is Sacramento tonight, and it's probably one of the worst situations: the Monarchs are finishing a four-game home stand, and they've won two out of three of those games. They lost to the Storm, but have beaten both the Sparks and the Mercury. The situation against Phoenix on Saturday will be no better -- they'll be finishing up a three-game home stand, and we know that Phoenix doesn't respect the Dream. Remember when they declined to dress Cappie Pondexter when they beat us at home by 18 points? The message was, "we can beat you with one hand tied behind our back."

If I can have a win against one of these two teams, I'll take it against Phoenix. It would be nice to beat them at the home court and put some doubts in their minds that they can repeat as champions. But if I have to get my win at Sacramento....well, let's just say I won't complain.