Next stop: Phoenix.<\/p>\n
The Liberty had a scenario on Wednesday night that called out to them for a strong performance. They not only entered Game 2 in their best-of-three WNBA first-round playoff series against the Mercury ahead after stealing Game 1 in Phoenix they rode into the game on the good news that even though Breanna Stewart had suffered a sprained MCL in her left knee at the end of Sunday\u2019s win, it couldn\u2019t keep her out of the starting lineup.<\/p>\n
But the defending WNBA champions did not answer the call. On offense they were off the mark and sloppy. On defense they were a sieve. And after falling way back before halftime they never recovered in an 86-60 loss at Barclays Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know these games the hardest games to win are the close-out games because there’s desperation from the other team,\u201d Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello said before the game. \u201cIt’s win or go home [for them]. So we’ll use our experience there and obviously the great crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crowd was great and the Liberty is experienced, but neither seemed to do the trick against the Mercury.<\/p>\n
After swiping the homecourt advantage, the fifth seeded Liberty has given it back to No. 4 Phoenix. The series is tied 1-1 with the deciding Game 3 scheduled for Friday in PHX Arena in Arizona. The winner will meet the team that emerges from the series between No. 1 Minnesota and No. 8 Golden State.<\/p>\n
The Mercury broke away from a tie score\u00a0with an overwhelming first seven minutes of the second quarter for a 19-point lead and the Liberty never got the margin back to single digits. Phoenix led by 24 with 2:19 left in the third quarter and by 31 with 6:09 left in the game. At that point Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello pulled the team\u2019s regulars to rest them for Friday.<\/p>\n
Emma Meesseman finished with 11 points, Sabrina Ionescu had nine points on 3-for-13 shooting and Jonquel Jones had 13 rebounds for the Liberty. Stewart finished with six points, two rebounds and two assists in 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
The team shot an anemic 30% from the floor, 22% on three-pointers and had\u00a015 turnovers.<\/p>\n
Alyssa Thomas and Satou Sabally each had 15 points and DeWanna Bonner and Kahleah Copper both had 14 points for the Mercury. Phoenix shot 48% from the floor.<\/p>\n
The Mercury dominated the Liberty on both ends of the floor in the second quarter, outscoring them 26-12 for a 51-37 halftime lead. Thomas had 13 points and Sabally and Copper 12 apiece at the break on combined 15-for-23 shooting.<\/p>\n
The Liberty opened the game looking like a team that wanted to end the series right away, but before the first quarter was over, Phoenix started to turn the tide its way. The Liberty held an 18-12 lead with 3:10 left in the first. It was\u00a0a lead that should have been bigger if they hadn\u2019t missed four of their first five free throws. However,\u00a0the Mercury closed the quarter with a 13-7 run in which five different players scored points to knot the score at 25.<\/p>\n
Out of the break, the Mercury went defense-first and erupted for a 24-5 run where Sabally scored 10 of the Mercury\u2019s first 12 points and capped by Thomas\u2019 transition layup for a 49-30 lead.<\/p>\n
The Liberty missed nine of 10 shots and committed four turnovers during the run while Phoenix made 10 of 14 shots. Eight of the Mercury points came as a result of Liberty turnovers.<\/p>\n
Sabrina Ionescu ended a 5:46 drought without a field goal with a three-pointer and Natasha Cloud would add another three as the Liberty took back a little momentum before the break.<\/p>\n
But whatever was there vanished as the Liberty missed every field goal attempt it took in the first 6:25 of the third quarter as Phoenix raced past them.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n\tRoger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Next stop: Phoenix. The Liberty had a scenario on Wednesday night that called out to them for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99525,436,99,434,1765],"class_list":["post-164563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-gamer","tag-new-york-liberty","tag-sports","tag-wnba","tag-womens-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}