<\/p>\n CBS News New York<\/p>\n
Live<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Satou Sabally and Alyssa Thomas each scored 15 points to help the Phoenix Mercury beat the New York Liberty 86-60 in Game 2 on Wednesday night, evening the best-of-three playoff series.<\/p>\n
The decisive Game 3 will be Friday night in Phoenix.<\/p>\n
Sabally was coming off one of the worst shooting games of her career when she was 2 for 17 in Game 1, but said in practice Tuesday that she was confident she’d bounce back. Kahleah Copper and DeWanna Bonner each had 14.<\/p>\n
New York had a huge emotional lift before the game with Breanna Stewart able to play after spraining the MCL in her left knee in overtime of Game 1 on Sunday. She was in her customary starting spot, but was mostly ineffective with just six points in 20 minutes. The boost from Stewart playing didn’t last long.<\/p>\n
After the 75-69 Game 1 loss, Phoenix players felt they missed a lot of shots they normally hit. Those shots were falling on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
Phoenix led by 14 at the half and scored the first six points of the third quarter to take a 20-point lead. The Mercury held the Liberty without a basket in the third until Emma Meesseman scored with 1:35 left in the period. New York missed its first 12 shots before that.<\/p>\n
Meesseman had 11 points to lead the Liberty, who only got 32 points out of their starting group.<\/p>\n
Phoenix took control of the game in the second quarter behind Sabally and Thomas. The Mercury led 36-30 before going on a 13-0 run to extend the advantage to 19 with just under 3 minutes left in the half.<\/p>\n
New York got within 51-37 at the half as Natasha Cloud hit a 3-pointer from the corner with 1.8 seconds left that brought the sellout crowd which included Spike Lee, Tracee Ellis Ross and Sue Bird to its feet.<\/p>\n
The Liberty could have been a bit closer, but they struggled from the foul line in the first half. Sabrina Ionescu, who shot 93% from the foul line during the regular season, missed her first four free throws before finally hitting one.<\/p>\n
\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CBS News Live CBS News New York Live Satou Sabally and Alyssa Thomas each scored 15 points to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":236029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,1520,1589,1502,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-236028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-new-york-liberty","12":"tag-phoenix","13":"tag-phoenix-mercury","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa","20":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115224577051478790","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236028","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=236028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/gettyimages-2236009805.jpg\")
<\/p>\n