Though she had a rough collision in the first half, Courtney Vandersloot (center) got up and lifted the Liberty over the Mercury Monday in Phoenx. AP Photo by Ross D. Franklin
Liberty coach Sandy Brondello was concerned with her league-leading team’s lack of urgency following Saturday’s loss to Connecticut at Downtown’s Barclays Center.
A change of venue and time zone, the return of a vital member of the rotation and Courtney Vandersloot’s most productive game of the season proved urgent enough in Phoenix Monday night.
Vandersloot scored a season-high 16 points, Betnijah Laney-Hamilton saw her first action since before the Olympic break and the Liberty used a big second half to pull away for an 84-70 victory over the Mercury in front of 10,299 fans at the Footprint Center.
“We had a couple of mishaps on defense that we weren’t connected on (in the first half),” said Vandersloot. “We came in and made the adjustments at halftime. Then, we were on the same page and I think it showed in the second half.”
The Liberty had a season high-tying eight-game winning streak snapped by the second-place Sun (22-7) in Brooklyn over the weekend, threatening their spot atop the WNBA standings and home-court advantage throughout next month’s playoffs.
“They controlled the whole game,” Brondello lamented following her team’s first loss since an 83-78 setback at Indiana on July 6, which was 10 days before the league took a month-long break for the 2024 Paris Games.
“We didn’t come out with the urgency we needed against a good team,” Brondello added.
New York (26-5) came out of the gate strong against Phoenix (16-15), rushing out to an 18-9 lead after 10 minutes. But the Mercury reeled the Liberty in during the second quarter, forging a 38-38 tie at intermission.
Vandersloot, who put…
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