Atlanta also committed 16 turnovers that converted to 18 points of the Mercury.

Ivory Latta led the Dream with 18 points. Iziane Castro Marques added 17. Kasha Terry had 16 points and 11 rebounds.

The Mercury got out to a quick start making a 14-2 run in the opening quarter, 29-13.

Atlanta was cold, missing their first 14 shots and went 24-of-37 by the half. Phoenix took a 51-37 lead into the break.

Phoenix scored 9 straight points to open the 3rd, 78-55 and Atlanta didn’t gain any ground the rest of the game.

Iziane Castro Marques led the Dream to their 3rd win of the season over the Indiana Fever Wednesday night, with 24 points.

“We pretty much played 40 minutes of great basketball, and it was a great team effort,” Castro Marques said. “We never thought we were going to lose this game.”

Atlanta lead the Fever by 10 points in the 3rd but the Fever came back to within 2, 63-61 with just over 5 minutes left in the 4th.

Back-to-back 3s from Betty Lennox put the Dream back in the lead, 73-71 with minutes left. Lennox also hit 2 free throws with just seconds on the clock to seal the win, 81-77.

“Being 0-17 is nothing to be happy about, but the thing I like most is that we persevered through it,” Lennox said. “Nobody even expected us to win one game and now we got three.”

Ivory Latta led the Dream with 18 points with 16 of her 18 in the first half to win over the Chicago Sky, 91-84 on Saturday night.

Latta was so excited about the win she danced around the court with her teammates surrounding her as blue and white confetti poured over them.

“It was just this great feeling inside knowing we finally got one,” Latta said. “I looked up into the crowd and saw all the smiling faces and felt that this is what they deserve.”

Kristin Haynie added 11 points with 11 assists.

“Everyone stepped up and just had the mind-set of contributing,” Haynie said. “It was all about us getting it done.”

And they got it done! They came back from 13-points down in the first quarter when Tamera Young, Betty Lennox and Iziane Castro Marques contributed 10 points each. Jennifer Lacy added 11, 18 points overall, to help the Dream get to a 46-35 lead at half time. Lacy says the team never gave up.

“There was so much time left,” Lacy said. “We couldn’t give up. We couldn’t let this one slip through, so we kept pushing.”

Chicago did bounce back in the second half to push a 1 point lead, 81-80, with just under 2 mintues to go in regulation.

But the momentum changed after Young made 2 free throws to put Atlanta up by 1. Then Latta scored a layup and Young added 2 more free throws to put them up by 5 with less than a minute to play.

“She’s a winner, she’s an absolute winner,” coach Meadors said of Latta. “It’s never say die with her. She just looks at me with those big eyes and I know she wants it.”

With 20 seconds left to go, Chicago’s Jia Perkins hit a 3 to cut the Atlanta lead to 2, 86-84. But the Dream pulled away by hitting 5 more free throws to win the game 91-84.

With the win, Atlanta has some newfound confidence says coach Meadors.

“We finally got some smiles,” coach said. “We can actually walk with our heads up high and shoulders back. I think now we’ll be OK.”

And it was Detroit that delivered that 13th loss on Sunday, 97-76.

Coach Meadors is a realist. She understands that it will take time to build a strong team but with a 13-game loosing streak for the first season of franchise history can easily dissolve the early optimism.

You can hear the frustration in her words.

“I’m going to lose this year, OK?” Coach Meadors said. “We know the chances of us having a great year are not good.”

But there is still hope. Maybe not for this season although, at least 1 win would help, but when Detroit was down 13 games in 2002 they came back and won a championship in 2003. And have been a contending team ever since.

“Man, we just have to get that monkey off our back,” said Ivory Latta, who scored a career-high 26 points and 10 assists.

Betty Lennox, fifth in the league in scoring with 18.9 points, only had 5 and shot 2-for-6.

Iziane Castro Marques added 10 points.

Detroit led most of the game with the largest margin of 21 points until Plennette Pierson hit a short jumper with 1:30 left in the first half to bump that number to 23.

With 47 seconds left in the third quarter, Latta hit a 3 to cut the Detroit lead to 8. But the Shock answered with a 10-3 run, topped off by a 3 from Humphrey just before the end of the period.

The frustration runs deep in the new Dream team but they just need to put it behind them and get that first win. It will all come together after that. We as fans just need to be patient.