Mohegan — Anne Donovan ... nah. Scratch that. Make that poor Anne Donovan, sat down in the interview room, opened a Diet Coke and cracked, "I need something a lot stronger than this."

That's because the Connecticut Sun didn't win a basketball game Friday night at Mohegan Sun Arena. They just ran out of time to lose. The final score was Connecticut 80, Los Angeles 76. In overtime. The Los Angeles team, winless, that used seven players, one of whom was Jasmine Lister, who spent the winter as the UConn women's graduate assistant.

She had played roughly two or three games in the last two years before Friday night.

The Sun coughed, wheezed, clinked and clanked their way to salvation before 5,542 fans, who went gasp at a time through the fourth quarter and overtime.

"Anne walked in here (the locker room) after the game and it was really quiet," Sun center Kelsey Bone said. "She told us that to pull out a win after playing that ugly ... my goodness. It's a really good sign."

And maybe a sign that after a few summers of discontent here, the deities of basketball have decided that maybe, finally, Uncasville can be lovely this time of year.

Here's more good news: The Sun actually increased their lead in the Eastern Conference. They won their seventh straight game, their first seven-game winning streak since 2008, increasing their lead to two full games over Washington and Chicago. True enough: long way to go. But first is better than last, no?

"I'm spent," Donovan said, during an entertaining postgame session with reporters, catching herself once after using the word "awful."

But then maybe arena sound engineer Mike O'Farrell — public relations director at Lawrence +Memorial Hospital by day, the Mohegan Maestro by night — had it right when he played "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor late in overtime. That's the point, right? Maybe the depleted Sparks, who are only missing Kristi Tolliver, Candace Parker, Alana Beard and Erin Phillips, are the only team in the WNBA the Sun could have beaten Friday night.

Turns out the Sparks were front and center.

And who ever apologizes for winning in professional sports anyway?

"Hopefully, this is the worst basketball we could ever play," guard Alex Bentley said. "And we still got the win. It speaks volumes for how hard we play."

Bentley isn't the only one who could have benefitted from something stronger than a Diet Coke. Poor kid played 43 minutes and 50 seconds of a 45-minute game. She led the Sun with 18 points. She had four steals. And with the ball frequently, never turned it over once.

"I'm sooooo tired," she said the game.

The Sun shouldn't have needed overtime for several reasons, not the least of which was a dreadful flagrant foul call on Alyssa Thomas late in regulation. Thomas fouled Nneka Ogwumike hard, but certainly appeared to be going for the ball. Instead, the Sparks, trailing 66-61 at the time, benefitted from a 4-point trip.

It wasn't so much that the officials' interpretation was, shall we say, absurd. It's that even when the Sun looked as though they had the game won, something bizarre happened to suggest otherwise. It was not an easy game to win for that reason. They won anyway. That ought to count for something.

"We played from behind pretty well, that's the good news," Donovan said, alluding to a 14-point deficit in the first half, spurred by the Sun's early 3-for-17 shooting. "We have good resilience."

And they continue to make enough winning plays late in games that belie their age and experience. All seven of their wins have been anyone's game in the fourth quarter. No gimmes. They've won them all.

They're back at America's Most Beloved Arena on Tuesday night for Indiana and then Thursday with Chicago. The arena was more alive Friday than it had been in a while. They saw a flawed, fun, feisty team crawl over a mile of broken glass to defeat a team that was way bigger on moxie than talent.

"It happens. It's basketball," Bentley said. "I'm proud of my teammates."

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.

Twitter: @BCgenius