Liberty must quickly recover from poor Game 2 performance against Phoenix or they'll be going home
The Liberty’s Sabrina Ionescu fights through the Phoenix Mercury defense during Game 2 of a WNBA first-round playoff series on Wednesday at Barclays Center. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
The Liberty’s mission to successfully defend their WNBA title was in good shape on Sunday night. Today it is in peril.
They can only look in the mirror to assign blame for the change in circumstances. With the opportunity to win their best-of-three first-round playoff series against Phoenix, they turned in arguably their worst performance of the season Wednesday night at Barclays Center.
The Mercury were better in virtually every aspect of the game and routed the Liberty, 86-60, to even the series 1-1. The teams will play the deciding Game 3 at PHX Arena on Friday at 9 p.m.
Phoenix broke away from what had been a tie game at the end of the first quarter and opened a 19-point lead in the second. The Liberty never got back into the game, trailing by 31 with 6:09 left when coach Sandy Brondello pulled all of the regulars.
After shooting 10-for-19 from the floor in the first quarter, the Liberty went 5:46 of the second quarter without making a field goal and 6:25 of the third quarter without one to finish at 30% shooting for the night.
“They took it to another level and we didn’t,” Brondello said.
The Liberty also committed 15 turnovers that Phoenix turned into 25 points.
“They came in and they embarrassed us on our home court,” Breanna Stewart said she told the team. “Now we have to go back there for Game 3 — winner-take-all. If we’re not ready for that, then we shouldn’t be here.”
“In the first quarter, they kind of let us play our game a little bit,” said Emma Meesseman, who was the Liberty’s only double-figures scorer with 11 points. “Then they just turned it up and they were way more aggressive [and] physical and we were just not there. We kind of collapsed starting from that [second] quarter. We were just not able to recover from that.”
Stewart suffered a left knee MCL sprain in the final minutes of the Liberty’s Game 1 overtime win. She was back in the starting lineup Wednesday night, but was not the player she has been. The team’s leading scorer this season with an 18.3-point average, she had six points and shot 2-for-6 in 20 minutes.
She said, “I just wasn’t where I wanted to be today and I have 48 hours to figure it out.”
However, Stewart is not where the blame lies for the surprisingly poor performance. This was a global meltdown.
Sabrina Ionescu had nine points and shot 3-for-13, including 1-for-8 on three-pointers. Natasha Cloud scored eight points (2-for-5) and Jonquel Jones had seven (3-for-9). Add in Leonie Fiebich going without a field goal and the starting five went 10-for-38 (26%).
Asked about Stewart’s performance, Jones replied, “It’s not on her. All of us have to kind of step our game up, step our defense up, step our offense up.”
Roger 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.
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