The difficult lessons the Liberty received from 1st loss of season
The post The difficult lessons the Liberty received from 1st loss of season appeared first on ClutchPoints.
Down two starters on the road, and on a poor shooting night to boot, the New York Liberty had too much working against them on Saturday as the Indiana Fever handed them their first loss of the season, 102-88.
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Much like the game these two teams played earlier in the season, the Liberty let the Fever build a lead in the third quarter. This time, it was with a 25-3 run that turned a six-point Indiana deficit into a 16-point lead. New York never led again.
'They just plugged holes and plugged gaps and made it really hard for us to get into the paint,' said Sabrina Ionescu, who had a game-high 34 points. 'Obviously it's hard to win a game shooting 20 percent from the three-point line.'
With Jonquel Jones still nursing an ankle injury and Leonie Fiebich with the German national team, Nyara Sabally and Kennedy Burke stepped into the starting lineup.
Sabally, who has missed most of the season herself with an injury, had her best game so far, shooting 5-12 and scoring 10 points with nine rebounds and a career-high four steals. But after Burke got off to a historically strong start to the season from three, she had an off game against the Fever, shooting 1-5 overall and missing all three of her attempts.
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'She didn't make a shots like she had in the past, but we probably should have activated her a little bit more,' Liberty coach Sandy Brondello said of Burke. 'It's a situation she hasn't been in for us in a while.'
The game wasn't all about the Liberty. Caitlin Clark, making her return after missing five games with a quad strain, positively torched New York in the first half, making six threes and scoring 25 points in the frame.
She gave Indiana momentum and a lead going into the break, but even in the spurts where she sat on the bench, the Liberty couldn't get the stops they needed.
Sydney Colson hit two second-half threes and Kelsey Mitchell hit a big one in the fourth.
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'We had so many breakdowns on defense,' Brondello said. 'They're pros for a reason, everyone can make a shot and obviously Sophie [Cunningham] made a few and Colson made a few, and [Lexie] Hull, and they're the daggers.'
The first loss is a learning experience for the Liberty
Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images
The 2024 Liberty won the WNBA championship. The 2025 Liberty have not.
Their 9-0 start was the best in franchise history, and even in their close games, they've had stretches of dominance — Saturday notwithstanding. Now with a 1 in the loss column, the team can step back and reflect.
'We're resilient,' Breanna Stewart said. 'If you compare to last year, sometimes that got a little bit shaky because we would just kind of crumble a little bit, and I'm confident in us, we know who we are and how talented we are.'
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Schematically, Brondello identified problems with the team's defense as the Fever shot 17-35 from three.
'We just overhelped off the corners for no reason, we didn't have the second efforts to close out,' she said.
The Liberty let mistakes compound, which tends to happen when New York can't get the stops it needs. It prevented the Liberty from getting going in transition.
'When we're having to take the ball out of the basket and we don't have our transition and push and flow, I think that's when we break down a little bit, and so I would say this is great learning for us,' Ionescu said.
As for Stewart, who had 24 points herself and was once again a foul magnet (10-14 FT), she was able to take some time for self-critique.
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'[I need to be] making better reads off the switches,' she said. 'They made it difficult, because there was constantly somebody there… and then collectively, our defense, we need to take more pride.'
The Liberty are back home on Tuesday when they will face the Atlanta Dream at 7 p.m.
Related: Natasha Cloud surpasses WNBA legend despite loss to Fever
Related: Sabrina Ionescu gets 100% real on Caitlin Clark's big performance
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