Breanna Stewart scored a game-high 27 points with eight rebounds and four assists in the New York Liberty\u2019s 106-69 win against the expansion Toronto Tempo on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The defeat did not appear to dampen the supportive mood in the Tempo\u2019s final home game of its debut WNBA season before another capacity crowd of 8,200 at Coca-Cola Coliseum.<\/p>\n
Stewart steered the United States to its fifth world championship title in Berlin last weekend and was named tournament MVP. She only played 22 minutes against Toronto.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Centre Jonquel Jones chipped in 11 points for the Liberty (26-16), winners of three straight.<\/p>\n
Forward Laura Juskaite led the way for the Tempo with a career-high 28 points, followed by rookie Kiki Rice with 19.<\/p>\n
The Tempo (11-31) was once again without its top offensive players, Brittney Sykes (left foot) and Marina Mabrey (right adductor), as Toronto dropped its sixth straight and 18th in 19 outings.<\/p>\n
The first-year Tempo enjoyed a promising 7-5 start, but then hit a wall, first with the veteran Sykes sidelined. Mabrey, who sits fifth in WNBA scoring with 20.8 points per game, was knocked out of action last month.<\/p>\n
Tempo: The home side had no answer for Stewart early in the third quarter as she made four driving buckets during a 14-6 run over the opening 3:31.<\/p>\n
Liberty: Former Australian national-team member Rebecca Allen checked in with 14 points against Tempo head coach Sandy Brondello, who also coaches Australia.<\/p>\n
The Tempo closed to within four points in the second quarter, but Stewart and Pauline Astier hit field goals in the final minute for an eight-point halftime advantage.<\/p>\n
The Tempo finished 4-17 at home, including two games in Montreal and two in Vancouver. Only the Connecticut Sun (three) and Seattle Storm (two) have fewer home victories.<\/p>\n
Tempo: Visit the Chicago Sky on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Liberty: Host the Atlanta Dream on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Breanna Stewart scored a game-high 27 points with eight rebounds and four assists in the New York Liberty\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":903361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-903360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/903361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}