College Park Center in Arlington, Texas witnessed one of the most stunning reversals of the 2026 WNBA season on Saturday night. The Dallas Wings, trailing by as many as 17 points and seemingly dead in the water entering the fourth quarter, erupted for a season-high 36 points in the final period to steal a 93-92 victory over the Chicago Sky — ripping a win away from a team that had every reason to believe it was going home with a victory.
For the Sky and Kamilla Cardoso in particular, it was one of the cruelest endings the sport can produce.
Cardoso Was Brilliant — And Then It All Fell Apart
Let’s be clear about what Kamilla Cardoso did on Saturday night: she was the best player on the floor for the better part of 40 minutes. The Sky center finished as the game’s leading scorer with a season-high 26 points on a staggering 10-of-13 shooting — a 77% clip that speaks to how thoroughly she dominated Dallas’ frontcourt. She added nine rebounds, three assists, and looked every bit like the interior force Chicago has been building around.
Cardoso scored her second bucket of the game through a foul, completed the three-point play, and was a one-woman size advantage for Chicago — neither Shepard nor Kuier could keep her off the glass or stop her from scoring when she got the ball in close.
By halftime, she had 14 points and had single-handedly kept Chicago in a comfortable position.
Then came the foul that defined the night. With 12.5 seconds remaining, Cardoso fouled Li Yueru — handing the Wings’ backup center two free throws that would ultimately decide the game. Cardoso fouled out in the process, watching from the bench as the game slipped away in the cruelest fashion. She was visibly emotional afterward, the weight of a season-high performance attached to a gut-wrenching loss written all over her face.
It was Player of the Game numbers in a losing effort — and that is a very specific kind of pain.
How Chicago Let a 17-Point Lead Disappear
The Sky built their advantage with suffocating interior dominance and timely perimeter scoring.
Chicago led 71-57 entering the fourth quarter
, and the Wings had shown no consistent answer for Cardoso all night.
Chicago still held a nine-point lead with just under five minutes remaining before Dallas scored eight straight points to trail by one.
Skylar Diggins had a steal that resulted in two free throws with 35.7 seconds left to push the Sky’s advantage to six points.
A six-point lead with 35 seconds left. By any conventional basketball logic, that game was over.
It wasn’t.
Bueckers Pulls Off the Impossible
What happened next will be discussed in Dallas for a long time.
With 30.6 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, Paige Bueckers drained a three-pointer despite being fouled, then hit the subsequent free throw to complete a four-point play that pulled her team within one point of the Sky.
The shot was absurd. Coming off a Li Yueru screen with the season on the line, Bueckers caught the ball near the top of the key and hoisted a leaning three-pointer while being fouled mid-release — one of those plays that shouldn’t go in but did, and that immediately changes everything about a game’s emotional trajectory. Klay Thompson, watching from the stands, was visibly stunned by the moment — a fitting reaction from someone who knows a thing or two about clutch shooting.
Bueckers reflected on the play with characteristic composure:
“Yueru set me a great screen, and I saw a little bit of daylight. I knew it had to go up, so just having that confidence after my teammates did a great job of getting me open, and just trying to knock it down.”
Li Yueru then made two free throws with 12.5 seconds left to give Dallas its first lead of the entire game.
The same player who set the screen for Bueckers’ four-point play stepped to the line and finished the job after Cardoso’s foul sent her there. The roles reversed — and the result was irreversible.
Jacy Sheldon’s last-second shot was off the mark, and Azura Stevens couldn’t put it back for the win.
Game over.
The Wings’ Broader Statement
Dallas head coach Jose Fernandez summed up what his team demonstrated:
“We kept battling. Good teams find a way to win, right? Down the stretch, we hit some big shots. We were good coming out of timeouts, executing.”
That quote carries weight.
The Wings completed the third-largest fourth-quarter comeback in franchise history, according to ESPN Research.
Dallas entered the fourth quarter down 71-57 and exploded for 36 points in the final period, outscoring the Sky 36-21.
Bueckers echoed her coach’s sentiment:
“We always felt like we were in it and we were scrapping and fighting. We were just trying to attack that way and just chip away, not hit any home runs, but one possession at a time, dig in defensively, get what we want and execute offensively.”
Bueckers finished with 19 points, eight assists, seven rebounds, two steals, and one block, shooting 7-of-16 from the field and a perfect 4-of-4 from the free-throw line.
Jessica Shepard led the Wings with 21 points and eight rebounds, scoring 17 of those points in the second half. Azzi Fudd added 13 points and Arike Ogunbowale chipped in 12.
With the victory, Dallas improved to 10-6, sitting fourth in the Western Conference standings behind the Golden State Valkyries and Las Vegas Aces.
The Sky’s Ongoing Spiral
For Chicago,
the loss dropped them to 4-11 and marked their fifth consecutive defeat — falling to 1-10 in their last 11 games after letting a 14-point fourth-quarter lead slip on the road.
Sydney Taylor added 18 points for the Sky, Diggins finished with 14, and Natasha Cloud tallied 10.
There was enough production across the board to win this game comfortably. The Sky didn’t lose because they were outplayed for 40 minutes. They lost because they couldn’t hold a lead when it mattered most — and because Kamilla Cardoso, their most dominant player on the night, fouled out at the worst possible moment.
That’s the painful reality of where Chicago sits right now. The talent is there. The results aren’t.
The Wings defended home court. The Sky head back to Chicago empty-handed. And somewhere in Arlington, Paige Bueckers is already thinking about the next one.
