ATLANTA — The Liberty woke up Saturday morning fifth in the WNBA standings with the hopes of capturing a win against the Dream to leapfrog to second.
But with a depleted frontcourt and down to only eight players after Sabrina Ionescu was ruled out with a left foot injury three hours before tip-off, the Dream ran away from them and handed the Liberty a 78-62 defeat.
With the loss — their fourth in the last five games — the Liberty remain in fifth. They sit two games behind Atlanta, who tied the regular-season series 2-2.
If the teams — who are tangled with the Mercury and Aces, too in the standings — were to finish the regular season with the same record, the tiebreaker would be determined by the team with the better record against .500 or better teams. Each is 12-11 in such games.
The next tiebreaker would be head-to-head point differential, which favors the Dream at plus-14.
Atlanta’s Karl Smesko may only be in his first season as a WNBA head coach, but he’s been a longtime fan of the league.
He can’t recall another season during which the competition was as balanced as it is.
“I don’t know who the eighth seed is going to be, but they can win [it all.] They’re that good,” Smesko said. “These teams can get hot, get on a run. There’s more good teams in the league right now than I can ever remember.
“Who knows, maybe the best teams just advance. But I would not be surprised if this is just a wild playoffs and things you don’t expect to happen [do happen].”
The Aces are an example of a team that’s getting hot at the right time. They entered Saturday riding a nine-game winning streak that has catapulted them into third place, just ahead of the Mercury.
The rest of the playoff picture includes the Fever (No. 6), Storm (No. 7) and Valkyries (No. 8), with the Sparks only a half-game behind expansion Golden State for the final postseason spot.
The Liberty are starting to feel the pressure in terms of how important each game is.
“We have to go into the next [seven] games with a mindset to win every single one of them,” Kennedy Burke said. “Sandy [Brondello] mentioned it, how we’re just in a tough spot, but we have to really just stick together and really want to win, basically. You know, just to be in a better seeding.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
