{"id":16800,"date":"2025-06-26T17:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T17:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/16800\/"},"modified":"2025-06-26T17:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T17:05:10","slug":"shorthanded-liberty-face-mercury-dream-to-wrap-up-road-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/16800\/","title":{"rendered":"Shorthanded Liberty face Mercury, Dream to wrap up road trip"},"content":{"rendered":"

With player absences piling up, the outlook for the Liberty<\/a>\u2018s first extended road trip of the season began to look grim. Suddenly the team that soared while achieving the franchise\u2019s best-ever start (9-0 to begin the season) came back to earth with a couple losses as Leonie Fiebich departed for EuroBasket and Jonquel Jones suffered a right ankle sprain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But after Sabrina Ionescu\u2019s late steal closed out Wednesday night\u2019s win against the Golden State Valkyries, the Liberty entered Thursday 1-1 on the four-game road trip.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m happy and proud of the way that we\u2019re resilient. There\u2019s a lot of things that are happening on our team,\u201d said Breanna Stewart, who scored a game-high 23 points along with 10 rebounds, three assists, two blocks and a steal against Golden State.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe continue to fight through it no matter who\u2019s on the court. We know this road trip is tough and we want to take it one game at a time\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s win came three nights after Ionescu, Jones and Fiebich were all sidelined for a loss against the Seattle Storm.<\/p>\n

Now, the Liberty\u2019s next \u201cfight\u201d comes against the Phoenix Mercury, a team that defeated the Liberty, 89-81, last week on the night Jones suffered her injury that\u2019ll keep her sidelined for at least a month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Mercury enter Friday\u2019s matchup on a five-game winning streak and will host after having five days of rest while the Libs bounce from city to city. Oddly enough, the Liberty entered Thursday as favorites to win the game but the surging Mercury have proven they have what it takes to defeat the defending champs in any matchup.<\/p>\n

In last Thursday\u2019s win, Phoenix won without the services of Kahleah Copper (left knee management). And star Satou Sabally, who averages 19.3 points and 8.1 rebounds per game, didn\u2019t even play up to her standards: 15 points on 4-of-18 shooting while logging nine rebounds and four turnovers.<\/p>\n

Rookie Monique Akoa Makani enjoyed a career-best 21 points while do-it-all star Alyssa Thomas filled the statsheet: 18 points, 15 rebounds, seven assists and two steals.<\/p>\n

All that \u2014 plus Jones\u2019 and Fiebich\u2019s absences \u2014 led to an eight-point Liberty loss. And those two will still be unavailable while all key Mercury stars and contributors are fully rested.<\/p>\n

The bad news continues as Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello couldn\u2019t provide a timeline for Fiebich\u2019s return from international duty. Fiebich\u2019s German squad lost, 83-59, to Belgium in the quarterfinal round. Germany will now face Turkey in a classification game Friday.<\/p>\n

The winner of that game will play in a matchup to decide fifth place while the loser goes on to compete in the seventh-place game. Both games take place on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t,\u201d Brondello said Wednesday when asked if she has any idea when Fiebich will be back. The coach added she hasn\u2019t \u201cspoken to her yet,\u201d and that Liberty general manager Jonathan Kolb \u201cwill be in communication with her agent.\u201d<\/p>\n

That timeline keeps Fiebich out of the Liberty\u2019s last game of the road trip against the Atlanta Dream on Sunday. Fiebich didn\u2019t play the last time the two teams met on June 17. Jones did and helped the Liberty overcome a 17-point deficit in the win.<\/p>\n

The Dream\u2019s new-look offense \u2014 under new head coach Karl Smesko \u2014 now gets a shot of revenge without two of the Liberty\u2019s best defenders. The WNBA\u2019s second-best team in three-pointers made (10.3) \u2014 almost the same as the Liberty (10.4) \u2014 now face less defensive pressure with Jones and Fiebich absent.<\/p>\n

The matchup poses a threat to the Liberty\u2019s hope of returning home on a good note.<\/p>\n

And it could get in the way of finishing the road trip .500, which would be good enough for a team currently shorthanded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With player absences piling up, the outlook for the Liberty\u2018s first extended road trip of the season began…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[5336,2473,2338,16493,4548,1502,15534,62,67,132,68,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-16800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-breanna-stewart","9":"tag-golden-state-valkyries","10":"tag-jonquel-jones","11":"tag-leonie-fiebich","12":"tag-liberty","13":"tag-phoenix-mercury","14":"tag-sabrina-ionescu","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114750759043086892","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}