I feel like this Liberty team can go where they couldn’t last season.
Direct evidence of that came on Sunday at Barclays Center, when the A'ja Wilson-less Aces completed a season sweep of the team that beat the Liberty in the 2023 Finals, defeating them in dramatic fashion, 75-71.
Trailing by 20 at one point, a late game-winning jump shot by Sabrina Ionescu and a subsequent block by Breanna Stewart sealed the win, fading any hopes of victory, but Liberty, while not happy with their play, still managed to pull off a win against a playoff team.
“Obviously, it wasn't a pretty win, but you can be forgiven for ugly wins,” Ionescu said. “Especially in this league, not everything goes smoothly. We hold ourselves to such high standards, so a win like this might dampen morale a little bit. But at the end of the day, we're 3-0 against Vegas this regular season.”
By the time the fourth quarter began, there was some doubt whether what was billed as a heavyweight bout would truly be competitive.
With Stewart and Ionescu on the bench, the Aces cut Liberty's 20-point lead to 13 with 10 minutes left, but still looked to be chasing the game.
The Liberty won't get away that easily.
The Aces went on a 5-0 run early in the quarter, signaling that this was going to be a close game, and things got even tighter when Betnijah Laney-Hamilton went down while chasing a rebound, clutching her right knee, where she had surgery in July, before Vegas went on another five-point run to cut the lead to three.
Nothing happened until Liberty scored in the fourth quarter.
“I felt like our play kind of dropped off in the third quarter,” Jonquel Jones said, “and honestly at the end we just did what we had to do.”
The game got muddy at times late in the game, with the Aces trying to take the lead after a missed transition layup by Sydney Colson, but Leonie Fiebic smashed a deep two at the other end to pull within three again.
But the Aces quickly held on to their first lead since the first quarter, taking a 71-70 lead on 3-pointers from Kelsey Plumb and Colson with just under two minutes left.
After struggling for much of the fourth quarter, Ionescu finally reclaimed the lead with a turnaround elbow jump shot with 44 seconds left.
After Ionescu made just 1 of 2 free throws following a miss by Plumb at the basket, Vegas had a chance to tie or win with 19 seconds left.
Jones led the way in rim protection for much of the day, but it was Stewart who sealed the win with a block on Jackie Young at the rim.
“Obviously, I'm happy to get this win,” said Stewart, who led New York with 21 points, “but at one point we were up by 20. … At times it just seemed like we were floating around.”
The win, in front of a star-studded crowd that included Dawn Staley, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Paige Bueckers, Aji Fudd, Jordan Chiles and Devin Booker, moved the Liberty (29-6) closer to a seemingly inevitable first place playoff spot with six regular-season games remaining but highlighted the work that remains to be done before the regular season ends.
Of further concern was an injury to Rainie Hamilton, who was carefully removed unaided and did not return to the game.
“Not yet,” coach Sandy Brondello said when asked about the situation. “She was in the locker room. We're just praying she's OK. She took a pretty bad hit. We'll see.”
