Can the Chicago Sky ride momentum from their historic WNBA playoff win to advance in their 1st-round series?

When the Chicago Sky take the court for Game 3 of their first-round series against the New York Liberty, the reigning champions will be backed by the most dramatic pendulum swing of the WNBA postseason.

The Sky underwent a transformation in the two days between a dismal Game 1 implosion and their dominant beatdown in Game 2, demolishing any concerns from their panicked playoff opener with a 38-point blowout Saturday.

The stakes are identical Tuesday as the Sky face the Liberty in Brooklyn (8 p.m., ESPN). But even on the road, the Sky’s confidence has returned with a vengeance as they aim to clinch a spot in the semifinals.

Game 2 created a template for how the Sky can beat the Liberty — and it also showed the team’s willingness to adjust its game plan mid-series, a flexibility that could be the key to this postseason.

Heading into Game 2, Liberty coach Sandy Brondello said she didn’t expect the Sky to “reinvent the wheel” with their defensive approach — but the Sky came fairly close in adjusting their perimeter pressure to undermine the Liberty’s offensive strengths.

After struggling to contain either side of the pick-and-roll in Game 1, the Sky triggered their switches a beat earlier in Game 2 to intercept screens and disrupt the initial action of each Liberty play.

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Although Allie Quigley put efficient pressure on Sabrina Ionescu in Game 1, coach James Wade switched Kahleah Copper onto the Liberty point guard in the rematch. The change allowed Quigley and Rebekah Gardner to double Ionescu in off-ball rotations, utilizing the trio’s length to throw her out of downhill rhythm and limit her to seven points and three assists.

Most importantly, the Sky made it clear they would rather rack up fouls than allow the Liberty to comfortably reach their screens or pass into the paint, an increase in force that resulted in 14 steals by seven Sky players.

“We got a lot of our defense going early, and that got our offense going,” Sky captain Courtney Vandersloot said. “When we’re flying around and we’re playing fast, we’re hard to guard because we have a lot of players in transition that can be deadly. We’re at our best when we’re playing fast.”

Pushing the Liberty into a Game 3 elimination scenario also highlighted flaws in the revamped first-round format.

The first two rounds of the playoffs used to be single-elimination games, with the top two seeds getting double byes into the semifinals. But that also meant the Nos. 3 and 4 seeds could be knocked out with a single loss. The Sky were beneficiaries of this unforgiving format last season, beating two higher-seeded teams in the opening rounds on their way to the WNBA title.

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The WNBA removed single-elimination games from this year’s postseason, but the resulting format has its own hitch: If the higher seed doesn’t win the first two games of the best-of-three first-round series, it’s forced to clinch on the road. Despite winning the Eastern Conference, recording a franchise-record 26 wins and earning the No. 2 seed, the Sky won’t have home-court advantage for Game 3.

Although playing on the road isn’t ideal for the Sky, who lost only four games at Wintrust Arena this season, Wade expressed confidence after Saturday’s record-breaking blowout.

“If we play like that, it doesn’t matter where we play,” he said. We could play on the moon.”