WNBA: Will the Mystics, Fever or Sparks make the playoffs?

This season’s WNBA playoff race is as exciting as ever. Three teams already are out of contention with the Connecticut Sun, Dallas Wings and Chicago Sky all eliminated, while the Minnesota Lynx and Las Vegas Aces have both clinched a spot. That leaves eight teams fighting for the six remaining spots.

While a lot can change over the season’s final two weeks, the competition for the No. 7 and No. 8 seeds projects to be thrilling. Currently, the Golden State Valkyries, Indiana Fever, Los Angeles Sparks and Washington Mystics are in the running for the last two playoff spots.

Here is what the playoff picture looks like for those teams entering Tuesday’s slate of games:

The situation for the Mystics

The team in the worst shape is the Mystics. They are three and a half games back with only six games left to play. Even with the second-most difficult schedule in the league, Washington essentially needs to run the table to have any chance of surviving.

That’s a lot to ask of a team led by rookies Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen.

They have also lost the season series to the Valkyries and are down 2-1 against the Sparks, meaning they’ll have to be better than them overall if they want to finish ahead of them in the standings. The Mystics have games against both this week, so there’s still a chance to either gain significant ground—or be forced to call it quits.

The situation for the Sparks

The good news for the Sparks is that, despite being out of contention at the moment, they’ve played two fewer games than the two teams in front of them.

So, in some ways, they control their destiny. Los Angeles also owns the tiebreaker over the Fever; they can secure it over the Mystics by winning their matchup on the last day of August. The Sparks don’t own the tiebreaker over the Valkyries, though, since Golden State won the season series 3-1.

Los Angeles has a rather kind schedule, too. It’s considered the sixth-toughest, which makes it a middle-of-the-road challenge for the Sparks. This week, they’ll have a colossal game against Indiana. A win there could go a long way to helping the Sparks end their four-year postseason drought.

The situation for the Fever

Every year, a team gets riddled with injuries and fails to meet their full expectations. This season, the Fever are that team. Caitlin Clark has been out for more than a month. Sophie Cunningham, Aari McDonald and Sydney Colson are out for the year with season-ending injuries.

The Fever appeared to be title contenders midway through the season, but now they are hanging on by a thread to that final playoff spot. To reach the playoffs again, they’ll have to start stacking wins. They are 4-6 over their last 10 games, and if they replicate that, the rest of the way, Indiana will end their season after game 44.

Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell will have to be superstars in the Fever’s last seven games if they want to stay in the top eight.

The situation for the Valkyries

Raise your hand if you had the Valkyries making the playoffs this year. If your hand is up, you are lying.

Expansion teams aren’t supposed to be good, but expectations make fools of us all. Golden State already owns the WNBA record for wins for an expansion team, and if they keep up their level of play, they’ll also have a playoff spot.

While things look good now, the Valkyries do have the toughest schedule left in the league with five of their remaining seven games against above .500 teams.

Golden State also owns the tiebreaker over all the the playoff hopefuls that are below them in the standings. So as long as they don’t have an epic collapse, they should be safe at this point if they play .5o0 ball or better the rest of the way.