Comets Don’t Let Injuries Stop Them

Van Chancellor, coach of a team trying to win its second consecutive WNBA championship, made a grapefruit-size circle with thumbs and forefingers.

But he talked of courage, not citrus.

“When you see a little bitty woman like her with an ankle this big, and she gives you a game like that . . . that’s guts,” he said, and no one who saw Kim Perrot play Saturday could dispute him.

A 5-foot-5, 130-pound wispy athlete who is part sprinter, part basketball point guard, Perrot made one big play after another in the stretch to trigger the Houston Comets’ 85-71 victory over the Charlotte Sting in the opener of a WNBA best-of-three semifinal playoff series.

Perrot sprained her right ankle in the regular season’s last game Wednesday and couldn’t walk afterward. “She could barely walk the next day at our shoot-around, but even then I had a hunch she’d want to play,” Chancellor said.

Perrot ended up with 13 points, six assists and three steals in 38 minutes, again demonstrating why many call her one of the WNBA’s most underappreciated players.

“I wasn’t going to let anything keep me out, not out of this game,” she said afterward, speaking at a news conference, an ice bag taped to her ankle.

Houston’s strength, shooting the basketball, easily canceled out Charlotte’s powerful inside game Saturday. In fact, the Comets even outrebounded the Sting, 35-20, and shot 52.5% from the floor.

Houston’s three prolific scorers, Cynthia Cooper (27 points), Sheryl Swoopes (17) and Tina Thompson (12), had a combined 56 points, thanks in part to Perrot’s floor game.

In the closing minutes, when the Comets were building a 10-point lead, Perrot, a 31-year-old from Southwestern Louisiana, also made masterful use of the 30-second shot clock. On three consecutive possessions, she worked it so the Comets didn’t shoot until seven, nine and three seconds remained.

Charlotte Coach Marynell Meadors seemed as amazed as Chancellor, albeit in a backhanded way.

“If she had a sprained ankle, I’d like to see the medicine they used to get her back,” she said.

Houston led early and late. Charlotte got even twice, at 37-37 and 41-41, but Charlotte’s muscle players, Rhonda Mapp, Vicky Bullett and Tracy Reid, were blocked off the boards consistently. Those three had a total of eight rebounds. Thompson and Swoopes together had 18.

Chancellor said his team looked like a field hospital and wouldn’t practice much today. Cooper came out of the game twice favoring her right knee and Swoopes tweaked a hamstring. “In addition to Perrot’s ankle, we got Cooper with a sore knee, Swoopes is hurt and Thompson has a bad knee,” he said.

The series moves to Houston Monday night.

WNBA Notes

In voting by a panel of sportswriters and broadcasters, Tracy Reid of Charlotte was selected the WNBA’s rookie of the year, narrowly edging Korie Hlede of Detroit; and Suzie McConnell Serio of Cleveland was chosen the newcomer of the year, an award for a veteran player in her first WNBA year. Reid received 20 of a possible 45 votes while Hlede had 18 and Ticha Penicheiro of Sacramento received seven. McConnell Serio, who had not played competitive basketball since the 1992 Olympics, had 25 votes. Margo Dydek of Utah had eight and Cindy Brown of Detroit six.