Sunday’s selection of games tips off at noon with The Liberty hosting Seattle at Barclay’s. New York was the best team at home in the 2024 season, boasting a 16-4 record that has trickled over to a 7-1 record to kick off the 2025 campaign.
These two played their first and only meeting on the season thus far on June 22nd, where The Storm posted up a double-digit home victory. However, The Liberty were short Ionescu, Jones and Fiebich for this game – two of whom will now be present. Fiebich is likely to defend Gabby Williams, who posted up 16 FGA – joining both Ogwumike and Diggins-Smith in that volume – against the weak NYL defense.
Leonie Fiebich played 33 minutes in the starting lineup for her first game back with the team, and held her primary defensive assignment of Rickea Jackson to just 8 points off 3-10 shooting. However, the 6’4″ German product can switch onto anyone, and that length still didn’t prevent The Sparks from notching 40 PITP.
Only LA has surrendered more OPP PITP in their L10 games than NYL, who are giving up 38.6 PITP themselves. The top volume within 8′ against NYL in these 10 games has come from these players:
– Hamby 12 FGA
– Iriafen 10 FGA
– Williams 10 FGA
– Boston 9 FGA
– Angel 9 FGA
– Brionna 8.5/gp
Seattle as a unit already prefers to operate inside, so this is going to be another mountain that The Liberty have to climb.
Another NYL defensive trait we’ve witnessed over this span is just how much Reb+Ast they have been allowing.They are ranking B3 in OPP RPG, OPP APG, and OPP 2nd Chance Pts. The best RA performers against NYL in their L8 games:
– Clark 17 RA (8 Reb, 9 Ast)
– Allisha 15 RA (9 Reb, 6 Ast) / Canada 13 RA (5 Reb, 8 Ast)
– Alyssa Thomas 23 RA per game (12 Reb, 11 Ast)
– Rhyne Howard 16 RA (7 Reb, 9 Ast)
– Gabby Williams 16 RA (6 Reb, 10 Ast)
– Burton 15 RA (5 Reb, 10 Ast)
– Plum 15 RA (7 Reb, 8 Ast)
Absolute insanity. Expecting the two leaders in pass volume of Gabby Williams and Diggins-Smith to both thrive.
Natasha Cloud is back on Cloud 9, currently leading The Liberty in PPG across their last three games at 19 PPG; The scoring bout is especially impressive when you factor that she was notching just 5 PPG in the 11 games prior. This has been purely intentional, with double-digit field goal looks in each of the contests, will see if it continues today at noon.
“My job as a point guard is to get two feet in the paint whether that’s for myself or to spray out to my teammates and put them in successful situations so… with starting these games… I just wanted to be more aggressive getting downhill so… I can be the best version of myself for us.”
In the L5 games, Seattle is giving up the most PITP, beating out today’s opponent by 0.4 PITP per game. Brondello did a full benching of Nyara Sabally, who saw just 5 minutes of action and lost her starting spot for Kennedy Burke (30min).
The Aces take on Connecticut after receiving a beating from The Fever, and if they lose this game then Becky Hammon may explode. She noted this after Indiana:
“How many layups they got? They were in the paint downhill layups all night. And quite frankly, they were the first half um of our of our first game, too. So, uh when you’re giving up layups, those are those are hard to to combat. But we had no presence on either end of the floor.”
“Maybe we shake something up. I don’t know. Maybe shake up the starting lineup. We got to look at something because starts haven’t been good, you know, and and it’s tough to to know that”
Granted, Connecticut is still dead last in both ORTG and DRTG over any span of the season – this team is another level of bad. Perhaps the most shocking metric in their L10 games is the 40.1 OPP RPG let up per game. This has featured 12 individual starters notching 8+ rebounds despite 11/12 playing under 31 minutes.
In the prior meeting two weeks ago, Las Vegas notched 45 Rebounds. They also opened this game up on a 19-0 run. All 5 Aces’ starters notched 4+ rebounds in the opening half while the scoring group of Gray, Young, Loyd and A’ja each produced 8+ Points off 6+ FGA.
The Sun haven’t played a game yet in July, while Tina Charles hasn’t played a 4th quarter in two straight games due to blowouts. The Aces remain the worst Paint defense on the year, while not improving much over their recent games. Don’t know if I could promote any full game spots for Connecticut, yet frontcourt players with 10+ 1H minutes have been able to succeed vs Las Vegas (L5 Games):
– ONO 12 PRA
– Howard 17 PRA / Boston 22 PRA
– AT 16 PRA
– Austin 12 PRA / Iriafen 11 PRA
Tina Charles is set at 10.5 1HPRA.
The final game is Chicago at Minnesota. The Lynx are now 10-0 at home, being the final remaining undefeated team on their home turf this season. While a matchup vs Chicago is one they would typically win with ease, The Lynx are on the second leg of their back-to-back in addition to Alanna Smith receiving a number of injuries last night that she failed to return from. Unsure if she plays today.
Angel Reese has been on an absolute rebounding tear over the last 4 games, with 16+ in each contest as she remains without her frontcourt teammate Kamilla Cardoso (AmeriCup). The Lynx have remained in the bottom third as a rebounding unit. In the 2 games that Cardoso has been gone, we saw Hamby post up 20 Pts along with Thornton notching 29 herself.
Atkins has been running nearly all 40 minutes since Cardoso left, and is often splitting facilitation duties with Rachel Banham. However, the tougher the defensive matchup the more Chicago relies on Atkins solely due to her offensive security while remaining defensively solid.