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The Las Vegas Aces are a loss away from being eliminated from this year’s playoffs.
New York pushed Las Vegas to the brink of elimination following an 88-84 finish Tuesday, Oct. 1 from the Barclays Center in Game 2 of the WNBA Semifinals. That’s five losses for the Aces in five meetings against the Liberty this season.
”We haven’t had the edge,” head coach Becky Hammon said. “Now we’ve found it the last month, we’ve gained a lot of ground but the feel was different from the jump. And this is why three-peating is hard, let’s be real.”
While it was the second 0-1 series start under the Becky Hammon regime, it is now the first 0-2 hole in her three-year tenure with the team. Moreover, it’s the first time a defending champ has fallen behind 0-2 in a best-of-five series.
As the series shifts out West, Game 3 is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 4 from the Michelob Ultra Arena with tip-off slated for 6:30 p.m. A win for New York punches a ticket to the WNBA Finals for a second straight year.
”Nothing has been won tonight,” Hammon said. “Now do we have an uphill battle? Absolutely we do, there’s no doubt about that. All New York did was what New York should do, which was defend their home court.
”It’s a series. We fully intend on pushing it to five games.”
Down two, Las Vegas had a chance to tie the game or take the lead with less than 10 seconds left in regulation but couldn’t secure the inbounds cleanly ultimately resulting in a turnover. It was the team’s 13th and final turnover in the loss.
“I don’t think it’s close if we stop passing it to the other team,” Hammon said. “And turning it over — they had 20 points at halftime off our turnovers.The amount of layups we gave up was obscene.”
After not featuring a lead change in Game 1, Game 2 produced six in the first 10 minutes before the Aces took a five-point lead into the second quarter. The Liberty climbed back into the game through the paint, scoring on three straight layups in a row.
New York would regain the lead on an eventual 11-2 run going back to the first quarter. At halftime, the home team went into the break fresh off a +11 second quarter.
“The second quarter continues to be an Achilles heel for us,” Hammon said. “One of you mathematicians can tell me what the numbers are in the second quarter but they’re not good.”
Las Vegas fell behind by 10 points in the third quarter but forward A’ja Wilson’s back-to-back field goals early in the fourth trimmed the deficit to three. It was countered with a 5-0 spurt by the top seed.
On two separate occasions, the Aces would cut the deficit to a point in a game where they never led in the second half. The team did leave seven points at the free throw line, finishing with a 63% mark from the charity stripe.
“I think we understand that it’s mostly us,” Hammon said. “We leave seven points on the free throw line. It really was a one possession game give or take. We got a couple good cracks at it and missed but it shouldn’t come to that point.”
Wilson was held to a season-low four field goal attempts in the first half despite connecting on three of them. She’d nearly match that effort in the first five-plus of the third quarter alone with two makes on four tries.
In the losing effort, Wilson led Las Vegas with 24 points on 11-of-18 from the field to go along with seven rebounds and four assists.
”I think it starts with our mentality from the beginning,” guard Chelsea Gray said. “Being the aggressor on both ends of the floor. I thought there were a lot more glimpses of it tonight in Game 2 than in the first game, we didn’t have it at all.”
Fellow Game 1 20-point scorer Kelsey Plum picked up two quick fouls in the first minute and 47 seconds. Serving as a disruption to her flow, she didn’t record her second made field goal until late in the third quarter.
Plum closed the night with just six points on 2-of-9 shooting.
Gray bounced back from a four-point effort in the first game of the series with a 10-point first quarter on a perfect 4-for-4 from the floor with two made three-pointers. She finished with 14 points and a team-high seven assists.
”I think edge shows up in different ways,” she said. “Edge shows in different ways if people show it. It’s those little plays — that’s our edge, that’s our swagger.”
Clark added 13 points with three made threes, all in the first quarter, as she moved into the starting lineup. She took the spot of forward Kiah Stokes who eventually left the game after colliding heads with New York center Jonquel Jones.
”It’s a head injury right now,” Hammon said. “She clearly got the bad end of that and we’ll wait and see, I don’t really have a lot of information for you. I can tell you we’ll be monitoring her very closely.”
Guard Jackie Young and Tiffany Hayes each contributed 17 points and 10 points respectively.
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