The Liberty will have two days between games to bounce back and recover from Thursday's disastrous meltdown loss to the Minnesota Lynx in the WNBA Finals opener at Barclays Center.
All-Star guard Sabrina Ionescu said this after her Liberty team lost a 15-point lead with five minutes left and ultimately lost in overtime, losing home court advantage in the best-of-five series. [the Lynx] Before they didn't pay our attention, now they are paying attention. ” Game 2 is scheduled for Sunday in Brooklyn.
“We will respond, that's for sure,” said Ionescu, who missed 18 of 28 field goal attempts. “I think everyone knew we weren’t going to win it all.
“Obviously we wanted to protect our home court and it's disappointing to lose like that, but we know we're going to respond.”
Veteran guard Courtney Vandersloot, a five-time All-Star who won a WNBA title with the Chicago Sky in 2021, called the game “the craziest thing I've ever been a part of” in his career. I called it.
And not in a good way.
“I'm not going to lie to you guys, this is tough. … There's no way around it. I went into the locker room and I felt like I missed an opportunity and that hurt.” Vandersloot said. “So the first thing I said is we have to find a way to move forward from this situation. If we don't deal with issues like this and nip them in the bud right away, it's going to be difficult to recover from this. Possibly. But we know we're a mature group and we understand this is a series for a reason.
“We are fully aware of the situation, we know the people in the locker room, we believe in them and we think enough is enough. So this series is not over. Not. [Game 1] It was tough, but I'm going to accept it because it's not my first time. ”
Sure, the Liberty are in the Finals for the second year in a row, but their focus all season has been on securing home court advantage after dropping their first two games on the road in Las Vegas last year.
The Lynx have won four of five against the Ribs this season, including winning the Commissioner's Cup, and manager Sandy Brondello acknowledged before Game 1 that “they have our numbers.”
But Game 1 was much worse than that. Liberty built two big leads — 18 points in the second quarter and 15 points in the fourth quarter after the Lynx cut their initial cushion to two points.
Ionescu fouled Courtney Williams on a go-ahead four-point play with 5.1 seconds left in regulation and had a chance to take the lead with 0.8 ticks left, but Brianna Stewart missed one of her two free throws.
Liberty then missed its first six shots and committed three of its 11 turnovers in overtime.
“It's the finals. It's going to be tough for everyone,” Ionescu said. “I think we were a little bit more relieved because we knew they were going to come back. We got off to a really good start and stood up…but we can't play like we don't lose. …We kind of let off the gas a little bit. It ended up being late and biting us in the butt. But I think it was a great learning experience for us.
“There were many moments during the game where I thought we could have won. But the great thing is you can't win this series in one game. Obviously, this hurts, but we need to improve. We need to keep honing and improving what we know we have.”
