Sabrina Ionescu is on fire! For the second consecutive week, Ionescu was voted East Conference Player of the Week. Last night against the Minnesota Lynx, she dropped a cool 31 points, also contributing five rebounds, four assists, one block, and one steal. Her performance, despite being impressive, the Liberty fell short to the Lynx 100-93. Sabrina has had a couple of games with 20 or more points.
With star starters like Breanna Stewart, who is currently sidelined with a bone bruise in her right knee, and key players like Nayra Sabally, a go-to option when MVP Finals winner Jonquel Jones is resting or unavailable, along with breakout star Kennedy Burke, sidelined with an injury for a few weeks, Ionescu has stepped up and then some.
Liberty fans, also known as, “Liberty Loyals,” are cautiously optimistic; we understand that the players should get back to 100% for the playoffs. However, a cloud looms above the team as they try to regroup, reshuffle, and find the winning combination until the complete starting line-up and bench are healthy.
In the post-game press conference, the star expressed that at least it was a loss they could look back on and be proud of. She said, “If there’s ever a good loss, like this was one of those losses that you can live with…everyone played as hard as they could.”
She continues, “Natasha [Cloud] was sick and played through it. Just really proud of the way we were able to fight back…that’s the standard. That’s the standard we have to come out with every night. But with a million reasons why we could have come in here and gone through the motions and made excuses for ourselves, we didn’t.”
“And I’m proud of each and every player that was out there tonight playing as hard as they could, doing whatever they could to get back to playing Liberty basketball, and we did that tonight. We got back to playing Liberty basketball. And now we’re going to have to do that every single night.”
When asked what they meant by playing Liberty basketball she elaborated, “we were locked in and you know, obviously it didn’t go our way but the things that we wanted to control, which is just like our ball pressure, continuing to focus on the defensive end, you know, things that we know we’re capable of doing and those things can’t waiver game to game. And so…tonight we got back to playing the way we wanted to play, but that’s going to have to be from here on out. That’s not a negotiable thing anymore for our group…especially with where we’re at in the season right now. That’s just the bare minimum that we need to play and continue to hold ourselves to that standard, and we will.”