.png)
Las Vegas has still yet to figure out this year’s New York squad.
The Aces suffered their first loss of the postseason in Game 1 of the semifinals Sunday, Sept. 29 from the Barclays Center, 87-77, at the hands of the Liberty. Top-seeded New York is a perfect 4-0 during this playoff run.
”That’s not the way you want to start,” head coach Becky Hammon said. “Especially on the road, you have to have a lot of things go your way. And they didn’t.”
While this year’s playoff series will determine one side of the 2024 WNBA Finals, it’s a rematch of last year’s finals series which was won by Las Vegas. All four meetings since capturing the title in Game 4 last season has gone to New York.
Game 2 is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 1 from the Barclays Center with tip-off slated for 4:30 p.m. Regardless of the outcome, both teams will head to Las Vegas for Game 3 later in the week.
”It’s do or die,” Hammon said. “You have to win Game 2, I don’t think there’s any other way around it. We were in this position with Seattle in my first year except we were the home team.”
New York’s Breanna Stewart had a near-perfect first half resulting in 20 points on 8-of-10 from the field on her way to a game-high 34 points.
“She had too many mismatches,” Hammon said. “We were switching guards onto her and [center Jonquel Jones] and you’re not supposed to do that. They destroyed us in there, both the bigs.”
Stewart’s hot shooting didn’t slow in the second half. She rattled off five straight points in the third quarter to help push the lead to 18 points. At quarter’s end, she had 28 points on the board with a 9-for-13 shooting mark while battling four fouls.
In the fourth, she’d hit a floater to go up double-digits again with a minute and 12 seconds left as part of six straight points.
Guard Sabrina Ionescu hit two three-pointers in the fourth quarter en route to 21 points. The Liberty shot 50% from the field and 42% from deep.
Jones tallied a double-double with 13 points and a game-high 12 rebounds. Forward A’ja Wilson was held to six rebounds which ties a season-low as her team was outrebounded, 31-22.
“Their length bothered us,” Hammon said. “The ball stuck a little too much for me and the whole team was pretty much committed to taking away A’ja — she had two or three people on her all night so we’ve got to do a better job of getting her in space but also giving her outlets.”
Las Vegas fell behind by 11 points in the first quarter. From that point on, every time the team made an effort to put a dent in the lead, New York would hit the gas pedal again.
”We’ve got to start better,” guard Kelsey Plum said. “Coach can say a lot of different things but it’s on players to play hard — play hard the whole game, start to finish.”
A second quarter 7-0 run was met by an and-one from Stewart after a timeout. Not long after, the lead had grown even larger to 12 now behind a 14-4 Liberty run.
The Aces fought back again, this time via a 12-0 stretch in the third quarter after falling behind by 18 points. There was another 6-0 spurt in the fourth but ultimately it was not enough.
”We’ll go back and we’ll regroup,” Hammon said. “I think we know what we have to do to win. We just have to execute it at a high level.”
Plum led Las Vegas with 24 points on 9-of-17 shooting with four made threes. Twelve of her points came in the third quarter.
”Respectfully, it’s a loss,” she said. “That’s the only thing that I really see. There’s a lot of things that I can do better individually and also helping my teammates collectively. That’s the only statistic that matters.”
At one point in the second half, Plum was seen having a light verbal back-and-forth with New York superfan Spike Lee.
”I can’t say exactly what was said,” Plum said with a smile. “I told him that he should talk louder. But it was all well in fun, it’s cool that he’s here.”
Wilson added 21 points to go along with five assists and two blocks. Guard Jackie Young was the final player in double-figures with 17 points on 38% from the floor.
Comments