Sabrina Ionescu powers Liberty past Dream and into WNBA semifinals
The reaction from Sabrina Ionescu — the two fists clenched as she turned down the court — captured everything.
The MVP chants that echoed throughout Barclays Center on Tuesday night as Ionescu sank her final free throws of the night minutes later did, too.
Leonie Fiebich had just finished an and-one underneath the basket with 4:11 left in the fourth quarter, an assist from Ionescu, her ninth of the game, serving as the catalyst. The Liberty, once on upset alert in Game 2 against the Atlanta Dream, went up by eight after the free throw.
They extended that lead to 11 — their largest of the game — when Fiebich hit a 3-pointer on the next possession.
But on a night when Atlanta adjusted to most of what went wrong in Game 1, and on a night the Liberty struggled to replicate most of what went right, Ionescu saved the Liberty from needing to fight for their season in a winner-take-all showdown on Thursday.
The Liberty needed every one of Ionescu’s playoff career-high 36 points in their 91-82 win to sweep the Dream and advance.
Ionescu shot 12 of 23 from the field and hit 5 of 11 3-pointers in a sensational performance, leading the Liberty into the WNBA semifinals that begins Saturday against the Las Vegas Aces.
“Your goal is to win a championship,” Ionescu said, “but you gotta win these, too. … Obviously the ultimate goal is what it is, but every single game is a championship game to get to that final goal.”
At the end of the regular season, though, Ionescu was struggling. She went 4-for-21 in a loss to the Lynx on Sept. 15.
The next two games only resulted in a 3-for-16 stat line. Ionescu understood that the postseason served as a chance to reset, and for the most part, that approach worked with 17 points and 45 percent shooting in Game 1 on Sunday.
Then, Tuesday night, Ionescu’s production epitomized the guard’s growth in her fourth full campaign.
Eleven of her points came in the third quarter, when Ionescu abandoned 3-point shots and just kept driving. She hit a layup. Then, a mid-range jumper and another layup.
“Thankfully,” she said, “the paint was wide open,” and it helped the Liberty keep pace after trailing by five at halftime — and by as much as 11 overall — before pulling away in the final frame.
Before that point, though, the Liberty struggled to replicate their Game 1 blueprint. The Dream jumped out to an early 11-3 lead, moved the ball in transition and operated with pace and efficiency.
Fiebich, the Game 1 hero with her career-high 21 points, didn’t score until the second half and spent most of the game in foul trouble.
Allisha Gray led the Dream with 26 points, while Rhyne Howard and Tina Charles added 19 and 14, respectively, to help generate enough responses when the Liberty crawled back and threatened to pull away.
“I think this game has prepared us for the next round,” head coach Sandy Brondello said. “… We had to work for everything that we got.”
So for a while, after the 32 regular-season wins that tied last year’s franchise record, after a convincing Game 1 win and a promising Fiebich breakout, it looked as if the Liberty’s season — and the title expectations that’ve accompanied it from the start — might come down to 40 minutes on Thursday, when the superteam and the upset-minded Dream collided one final time in Atlanta.
Brondello had warned the Liberty ahead of time. She reminded them of what happened last year during the first round of the playoffs, when the No. 7-seed Mystics took Game 2 to overtime before the Liberty escaped with a narrow win.
Brondello even used a Pat Riley quote with her players, emphasizing the point about the pitfalls of not being prepared after a major win.
For the first quarter, she was right. For the second frame, too — and up until Ionescu took over. And now, a rematch with the Aces awaits.
“She can change the game in so many different ways,” Jones said.
