Mike Thibault chuckled when asked why there have been so many large comebacks in the WNBA this season.

"I have about three or four reasons," the Washington Mystics head coach said, "and I don't know if it's consistent from game-to-game."

The WNBA has gone gonzo this season with teams rallying from double-digit deficits. There have been six games in which a team won after trailing by 17-or-more points.

Washington has been involved in three of those games, one of which it led the Connecticut Sun by 22 points in midway through the third quarter and lost.

The Mystics play host to Connecticut on Friday night (Verizon Center, 7 p.m.) with a lot on the line. The teams are tied for third place in the overall standings with 13-9 records (the top eight teams qualify for the playoffs, regardless of conference).

Friday's winner also clinches the season series and earns an all-important tiebreaker. A higher seed not only earns a team a home playoff game, it can also get them a bye and the rest that comes with it.

And no lead is safe.

"I've been involved in some big comebacks in my time," Sun head coach Curt Miller said, "but most of those times the deficits were in the first half. You're seeing these comebacks happen starting in the third quarter.

"The Los Angeles-Seattle game late (Tuesday) night. … Seattle took a lead in the third quarter after being down 17. They weren't able to finish the comeback, but they came all the way back."

The Elias Sports Bureau looked back at the past five WNBA seasons for games in which a team rallied to win after trailing by 15-or-more points.

It happened five times last season, eight times in 2015, five times in 2014, nine times in 2013, and eight times in 2012.

The average deficit for a winning team this season has been 6.46 points. There have been four games in which a team rallied to win trailing by 14 points. And the crazy part of this year's six 17-plus point rallies is that they've all happened between July 2-25, including two on the same day (July 18).

Washington has been on both extremes this year. It led the defending champion Los Angeles Sparks by 17 points at halftime on July 2.

Los Angeles won, 76-69.

Six days later, Washington led the Sun by 22 points with four minutes, 41 seconds left in the third quarter.

Connecticut won, 96-92.

The Mystics trailed the Atlanta Dream by 21 points with less than two minutes left in the first half on July 19.

Washington won in overtime, 100-96.

"It always felt like if teams got down (in past years), they could make some sort of comeback, but it wasn't from that big of a deficit," Thibault said. "Teams were down 12 or 15 points, not 18 or 20."

The Sun led the New York Liberty by 21 points (70-49) with 1:42 left in the third quarter of their June 23 game.

The Liberty stormed back and tied it with 1:06 remaining, forcing Connecticut to scrape out a 94-89 win.

So why is this happening?

"The only thing I can think of, and I don't necessarily want to say that teams are evenly matched this year," Sun Jasmine Thomas said, "but a lot of teams are really, really talented. Even teams that are struggling, it might not show in their records, but they are talented and capable."

Thibault said, "The talent level is spread out in the league more this season."

Parity has led to teams being bunched up in the standings. Just five games separate Connecticut and the Mystics from the Chicago Sky and Indiana Fever, both of which are 8-14 and tied for 10th place.

"There's such a fine line in this league between winning and losing," Miller said. "It's going to be a dog fight for nine of us fighting for playoff positions. You feel like one bad week and you could flip in the standings.

Thibault said, "Maybe other than (last place) San Antonio, every team feels like they're in contention for a playoff spot. You don't have those games where a team has already gone south and kind of mails it in in a sense. You have every team thinking, 'man, we still have a chance.'"

Teams are shooting more 3-pointers than ever at all levels nowadays (call it the 'Steph Curry Effect'), which can change a game quickly. Miller noted that teams also want to play faster, which leads to more possessions and more chances to score.

Thibault said that last year's rule change with the shot clock has changed things, too, as it now resets to 14 seconds after an offensive rebound instead of 24 seconds.

"That puts more possessions in a game," Thibault said. "In the past, if we get an offensive rebound with three minutes to go, we can milk 20 seconds off the clock."

Washington is down two players. Tayler Hill, its second-leading scorer, tore her ACL on July 15. Reserve Natasha Cloud suffered a partial plantar fascia tear in her right foot during Tuesday's game against San Antonio and is out at least two games.

The Mystics still has the trio of 2015 WNBA MVP Elena Delle Donne (19.3 ppg, 6.4 rpg, 1.5 bpg), Emma Meesseman (11.7 ppg, 4.5 rpg), and Kristi Toliver (10.6 ppg), the latter who is a career 39.7-percent 3-point shooter, tops all-time among players with a minimum of 800 attempts.

n.griffen@theday.com