The 2025 New York Liberty are good enough that they can beat any team in the WNBA, even on an off night. With the Atlanta Dream threatening to run them out of Barclays Center on Tuesday night, it took a little extra from an unlikely source.
Second-year guard Jaylyn Sherrod, mostly relegated to garbage time in the season’s opening weeks, found herself on the court against one of the best teams in the league as New York tried to mount a furious comeback. The reason wasn’t injuries or foul trouble, it was simply energy.
“It was still so passive…we needed some speed,” Liberty coach Sandy Brondello said. “It gave us a lot of energy, gave this a little bit of rest, but when someone plays that hard, the rest of them kind of react to it and I think she sparked it.”
Sherrod missed her only shot attempt and played just nine minutes, but every one of them was impactful. Her spark helped turn a 64-47 deficit into a competitive game in the fourth quarter — a game that the Liberty ultimately won, 86-81, as their superstars stepped up, led by Sabrina Ionescu’s 34 points.
It was Ionescu’s second consecutive 30-point game, making her the first player in the WNBA this season to accomplish that feat.
But if not for the spark that Sherrod brought, it may have been for naught.
“I think Jaylyn came in and gave us a lot of energy,” said Nyara Sabally, who got the start in place of an absent Leonie Fiebich. “She kind of shifted the energy for us and [we were] just playing off of that.”
The Liberty were coming off their first loss of the season, a 102-88 defeat at the hands of the Indiana Fever that will ultimately keep them out of the Commissioner’s Cup final. For much of the game on Tuesday, the same defensive problems that plagued New York against the Fever were also a problem against the Dream.
“We just need to play harder sometimes,” Brondello said. “It was too easy for them in the first half, it’s not really what we had planned. We were going under everything and they’re shooting threes and we didn’t make them feel uncomfortable.”
The Liberty again struggled to guard the three-point line, often either closing out too late or simply missing rotations that led to easy looks. The Dream hit eight of their 12 threes for the game in the first half.
After losing to Indiana, Ionescu talked about how constantly having to take the ball out of the basket kept them from setting up on offense. Sherrod helped make sure that wasn’t necessary late against the Dream. So too did Sabally, for that matter.
“Her ceiling is so high and it’s just a matter of keeping her healthy,” Brondello said of Sabally. “We believe in her. She’s just got this big, physical body…she just does so many things and she always brigns that effort.”
Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu is on a historic run
Much like Caitlin Clark did to the Liberty over the weekend, Ionescu put the Dream on their heels early on Tuesday.
She had 20 points in the first half on 7-9 shooting, sending the Barclays Center crowd into an increasing state of hysterics with each made three.
When the dust settled, Ionescu came out of the game in historic fashion, joining Breanna Stewart as the only Liberty players to ever have back-to-back 30-point games.
“Sab’s a scorer. She’s continued to develop the ways in which she scores,” Stewart said. “She’s a shooter, she wants to go left, you know these types of things. Now she gives people different looks, whether it’s getting to the basket, o-boards, finishes, threes, mid-ranges. The ability for her to score multiple ways makes it really hard for people to guard.”
Next up, it will be a quick turnaround for the Liberty, who have to face the Phoenix Mercury on Thursday night in Brooklyn. The game will tip at 7 p.m. ET.
The post The Liberty’s unsung hero who didn’t score a point in comeback vs. Dream appeared first on ClutchPoints.
0 Mga Komento