Liberty Hope to Use Furious Fourth Down Playoff Road

While a comeback fell short, the New York Liberty hope the final 10 minutes against the Minnesota Lynx leave a lasting impact.

Brandon Todd, NY Liberty

BROOKLYN-The New York Liberty fought off most of the Sunday scaries but the final seven proved to be just a little too much.

New York made a game out of a 26-point deficit to the Minnesota Lynx on Sunday at Barclays Center, but one last touchdown and extra point evaded their grasp as they eventually fell 88-79. The loss denied the Liberty (31-7) a chance to clinch homecourt throughout the upcoming WNBA Playoffs but New York still controls its own destiny with two games left on the regular season docket.

"I was happy for 10 minutes tonight," head coach Sandy Brondello said in the aftermath. "The rest of it wasn't so good."

Minnesota (29-9) used both New York's strengths and weaknesses against them: the Lynx shot 9-of-18 with an extra point on the line in front of the three-loving Liberty and generated 21 points off 11 seafoam turnovers. That made it hard to erase the 24-point deficit that put a damper on the "Ellie Stomp" that traditionally opens the fourth, though the Liberty's mastodon mascot did what she could to keep the volume up.

New York kept the momentum rolling well enough to keep the crowd entertained, but any comeback effort was burdened by the deficit inflated by early shortcomings: Minnesota jumped out to a 30-17 lead, producing just the fourth triple decade in a period against the Liberty this season.

"We know, coming out, it's never acceptable to allow a team to score 30 points in the first quarter," forward Betnijah Laney-Hamilton said. "That was due to our lack of aggressiveness and so that was our kind of emphasis moving forward."

Brandon Todd, NY Liberty

The second quarter was even thanks to some Kennedy Burke defense (she was the one New Yorker with a positive plus/minus in the first half) but Minnesota scored the first 11 points of the third to unofficially put the game out of reach and render a 22-11 advantage in the last 10 minutes mostly null.

"You can't show up after the third," said forward Breanna Stewart, who added 17 points and nine rebounds of her final respective tallies of 38 and 18 in the fourth. "We need to be ready. Minny, obviously, is a really good team and they're playing really, really well together. They deserve this more than we did."

"In the second quarter, at least we responded," Brondello said. "We found a way, but we didn't come out with the urgency that I would have liked or had expected. This is a very disciplined team, the way they defend, but also the way they move the ball, it can be a really tough matchup there. The only great thing about it is, hopefully, we meet them again and it should be fresh. We can learn a lot from that."

Like another high-profile loss, Aug. 24's defeat to third-place Connecticut, Sabrina Ionescu was left feeling grateful for the agony of defeat, reasoning that such a defeat could be the first stop on a championship journey.

"It's always kind of a blessing in disguise, sometimes, to get punched in the mouth and have to be able to respond and understand what it takes to beat a team that's as good as they are," Ionescu, who struggled from the field at 4-of-21, said. "I'm going to continue to stick with it, knowing that I'm definitely going to be better than I was tonight moving forward. I think I need a game like this sometimes too to just kind of knock some sense into me and understand I can't show up and play like this for us to win."

Despite the setback, the Liberty hope the final 10 minutes last a month or longer, especially with the playoffs tipping off next Sunday in Brooklyn. Positive developments of the conventional and developmental variety emerged through the 600 seconds.

Brandon Todd, NY Liberty

Stewart continued to defy the narrative of leaving her prime, nearly dragging New York from the depths of defeat single-handedly. Nyara Sabally, whose extended minutes stand as the biggest difference in this season compared to last, was a perfect 3-of-3 from the field and pulled in three rebounds, completing a performance that Brondello called "massive."

Most of all, New York's sense of fight, evidenced by Brondello keeping starters on the floor until the final eight seconds, in times of brutality is hoped to send a message to their fellow championship contenders.

"We could have gone in the fourth quarter and just kind of given up the game, put the bench in, just let it be one of those games," Stewart said. "But we continued to fight we were continuing to tell each other like cut (the deficit) to ten. Cut it to ten, you know, get this energy behind us.We have this crowd and let's see what happens. We obviously dug ourselves in a deep enough hole, but we were just trying to mix it up in the fourth quarter and continuing to be aggressive."

"What we take from the fourth quarter is the way that we played," Stewart continued. "If we would have played that way the entire game, we don't know what the outlook would have been. But just the fight, you know, the way that we continue to play on a string, we never give up."

New York can show what it has learned come Tuesday when they have a chance to secure the top seed goal in Washington (7 p.m. ET, WWOR).

Make sure you bookmark All Knicks for the latest news, exclusive interviews, film breakdowns and so much more!

• Marcus Morris Glad to Be Back
• Knicks Bring Back Marcus Morris
• Lynx Bite Liberty's Homecourt Clinch
• The Case to Keep Julius Randle
• NBA Legend "Feared" Knicks Star