{"id":4358,"date":"2025-06-25T17:38:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themoneyballer.com\/access\/?p=4358"},"modified":"2025-06-25T17:38:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:38:10","slug":"expectations-struggling-liberty-enter-ballhalla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themoneyballer.com\/access\/2025\/06\/25\/expectations-struggling-liberty-enter-ballhalla\/","title":{"rendered":"Expectations: Struggling Liberty Enter Ballhalla"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Aces picked up a win vs Indiana to end their 3 game skid, and this will be the first leg of a back-to-back to end an eight game stretch that featured 7 at their home stadium. Aces absolutely need to pick up both these wins before entering a 5 game roadtrip, and this starts with Connecticut tonight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Connecticut Sun are awful, hosting a 2-12 record that features 6 straight losses, and will be playing one of the trio of Aces, Lynx and Storm for their next six games. In June, they not only have the worst <strong>DRTG<\/strong> (113) yet also have the worst <strong>ORTG<\/strong> (90.5). Now with <strong>Marina Mabrey<\/strong> out for 2-4 weeks, that ORTG falls further on the year to <strong>86.4<\/strong>. CON surrenders 39.1 OPP RPG (13th), 21.3 OPP APG (11th) and 13.8 FGM at the Rim (13th).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tina Charles<\/strong> with an appalling <strong>34.5%<\/strong> usage rate when Mabrey is off the court this season, producing 21.3 Pts per 30min. <strong>Lindsay Allen<\/strong> is the team leader in ball handling now despite being off bench, but we get a lot of <strong>Sheldon<\/strong> and <strong>Rivers<\/strong> from the starters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I get most intrigued by the rookie duo of <strong>Rivers<\/strong> and <strong>Morrow<\/strong>, both extremely talented. Only Rivers has been able to generate consistent minutes as of late, as the LSU product Morrow still has to fight for frontcourt minutes with Charles &amp; Nelson-Ododa. She has averaged 20 PR per game across her last three, despite playing just under 20 minutes per contest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Aces defense has surrendered the 3rd most PITP in June, by far the worst aspect of their defense. <strong>A&#8217;ja<\/strong> noted in postgame that they, <em>&#8220;Really need to defend the Pick-and-Roll better&#8221;<\/em> after <strong>Boston<\/strong> went for 26 points. Hammon prior to this game vs Indiana, <em>\u201cOur defense was atrocious again in the third quarter, and that was the first five, not that second unit&#8221;<\/em>. <strong>Boston<\/strong> joined 6 other PF\/Cs to notch >15 Pts vs Aces this month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Can take any Aces player to succeed, yet <strong>A&#8217;ja Wilson<\/strong> likely has the most motivation to get a quality game under her belt; Noted after an 8-21 shooting performance vs Indiana that, <em>&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t a typical A&#8217;ja performance. Every win is a need for us.&#8221;.<\/em> She shot 13 times in the 1H vs Indiana, while also notching 13 in the 1H against CON last meeting &#8211; both of these marks being season high. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Valkyries host <strong>Liberty<\/strong> today, who are expected to be with <strong>Sabrina Ionescu<\/strong> today after she missed the last game with a neck injury. The Valks have won 4 straight home games, which included double-digit victories over The Aces, Sun and Fever. At home in June they rank:<br>&#8211; 3rd in DRTG<br>&#8211; 1st in OPP PITP (24)<br>&#8211; 1st in OPP Pts off TOV (11)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most impressively is how they have absolutely swarmed this top options, as the only frontcourt player to reach 20+ Points against them this month has been <strong>Napheesa Collier<\/strong> (who else?). Granted, <strong>Stewart<\/strong> did cover this mark in both games at Barclay&#8217;s to kick off the season, producing 19 FTA in their most recent meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Temi Fagbenle<\/strong> was activated by the team after her EuroBasket team (Great Britain) was eliminated, which further bolsters the interior defense of this squad. <strong>Salaun<\/strong> remains out as France is onto the elimination round. With Fagbenle, Thornton and Hayes all in the mix, <strong>Billings<\/strong> has yet to crack double-digit scoring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Liberty lost their statistically two most impactful defenders in <strong>Jonquel Jones<\/strong> (ankle, out 4-6 weeks) and <strong>Fiebich<\/strong> (EuroBasket). They have ranked in the same groupings as Chicago, Sparks and Sun in <strong>DRTG<\/strong>, <strong>Pts off TOV<\/strong> and <strong>2nd Chance Pts<\/strong> in these last 4 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Aces picked up a win vs Indiana to end their 3 game skid, and this will be the first leg of a back-to-back to end an eight game stretch that featured 7 at their home stadium. Aces absolutely need to pick up both these wins before entering a 5 game roadtrip, and this starts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-betting"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/themoneyballer.com\/access\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/themoneyballer.com\/access\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/themoneyballer.com\/access\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themoneyballer.com\/access\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themoneyballer.com\/access\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/themoneyballer.com\/access\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4359,"href":"https:\/\/themoneyballer.com\/access\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4358\/revisions\/4359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/themoneyballer.com\/access\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themoneyballer.com\/access\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themoneyballer.com\/access\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}