The trends from the previous week reversed themselves yesterday. Not only did the Storm see a four-game winning streak snapped in L.A., every other Western Conference team save Tulsa was victorious, moving the Storm down the standings.

Team            W   L   GB   H/A
--------------------------------
Minnesota      24   6   -    2/2
Phoenix        17  12  6.5   3/2
Seattle        17  13  7.0   2/2
San Antonio    14  15  9.5   3/2
Los Angeles    13  17 11.0   3/1

Despite the Mercury currently holding a half-game advantage in the battle for second in the West, the Storm still controls its own destiny by virtue of the upcoming game between the two teams a week from Friday. The Storm is also still one win OR one Los Angeles loss OR one San Antonio loss away from clinching a playoff berth. That could happen as soon as tomorrow, when the Silver Stars host the Mercury.

Let’s take a look at the latest results from 500 simulations of the remainder of the season:

Team            W      1     2     3     4   LOT
------------------------------------------------
Indiana       22.7   .92   .06   .02   .00   .00
Connecticut   20.2   .05   .60   .28   .07   .00
Atlanta       19.3   .04   .25   .41   .30   .01
New York      18.4   .00   .11   .30   .59   .00
Chicago       15.4   .00   .00   .02   .10  1.00
Washington     6.1   .00   .00   .00   .00  1.00

Team            W      1     2     3     4   LOT
------------------------------------------------
Minnesota     26.7  1.00   .00   .00   .00   .00
Phoenix       20.3   .00   .63   .33   .04   .00
Seattle       19.3   .00   .36   .59   .05   .00
San Antonio   17.4   .00   .01   .09   .77   .13
Los Angeles   15.1   .00   .00   .00   .13   .87
Tulsa          3.5   .00   .00   .00   .00  1.00

The Mercury does now have the upper hand when it comes to claiming home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Other than that, not much change to the Western Conference projections. In the East, Atlanta has maintained its late surge up the standings. Back-to-back wins over Indiana give the Dream an outside chance of winning the conference. The Dream is now nearly as likely to finish second in the East as fourth, which has to be good news for the Fever. Indiana won’t want to see Atlanta until the Eastern Conference Finals.

The opponents the Storm is most likely to face:

(3) at Phoenix (2): 59%
(2) vs. Phoenix (3): 32%
(4) at Minnesota (1): 5%
(2) vs. San Antonio (3): 4%

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 31st, 2011 at 3:32 pm and is filed under picture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.