September 9th, 2016: Connecticut at New York

Just the Facts, Ma'am: Tina Charles showed why she remains one of the top candidates for 2016 MVP in the short-handed Liberty's 89-82 win over the Connecticut Sun, leading the way with 23 points and 10 rebounds. Sugar Rodgers added 18 for New York. The Sun got 20 points each from Chiney Ogwumike and Courtney Williams.

For fashion tips, motherly love, Disney pop, questionable calls, speed, moxie, and too many passes, join your intrepid and sticky blogger after the jump.


Good evening, everyone! Live (well, not so live), it's the Game Notes of Doom at Madison Square Garden, writing up the Connecticut Sun's visit to the New York Liberty.

No pregame notes- arrived shortly before tip because I spent the afternoon with my mom. Happy mumble-mumbleth birthday to the Queen Mother, she who brought me into the world and introduced me to all the sports. This is all her fault.

Beautiful "God Bless America" performance- she needs to come back and do an anthem. The girls doing the anthem weren't as good- trying too hard to harmonize with each other and not being sure who was in the lead.

At halftime, the ridiculously short-handed Liberty are up 44-38 on the Sun. Tina Charles is in MVP form with 17 points, 7 rebounds, and a bunch of steals. Courtney Williams has 14 off the bench for Connecticut. I'm worried about our offense, though; way too much passing, way too many shot clock violations and forced shots.

Fashion report! Tanisha Wright: black top, appears to be partially pleather, black bike shorts that do not complement her figure. Kiah Stokes: dark beige tank top, navy blue pants (yoga pants?), shoulders to die for. Shoni Schimmel: short-sleeved black tee a touch too long, maroon jeans. Shavonte Zellous: navy blue button-down shirt, distressed jeans. Morgan Tuck: light maroon blouse, black pants. Rachel Banham: unremarkable black. In related news, there are too many injured players on these two rosters.

Note to self- check Kelly Faris's game logs for home/road splits. She was DNP today, and I feel like this might not be the first time on the road. I'm getting a Shay Doron vibe off the way she's being treated, and I don't mean questionable medical diagnoses.

I normally split everything up into posts and guards, but since each team only played three reserves tonight, that would necessitate one player on each team getting her own paragraph. I'm not that impressed with Courtney Williams, nor am I that annoyed at Amanda Zahui B., so we're gonna switch it up a little.

Curt Miller really seems to be going with the youth movement late in the season. Courtney Williams and Jonquel Jones got a lot of run. I saw Williams at South Florida, so I know she can fill it up, and we did not game plan for her. She showed midrange and paint game, though I don't know if her three-point shot is ready for the big time yet. What I wasn't expecting was her energy and pursuit on defense, and that's the kind of thing that keeps players who were volume scorers in college employed in the WNBA. Jonquel Jones uses her length well and seems to be becoming more comfortable in her body. She had a brutal rejection of Amanda Zahui B in the second half that could have been a game-changer. I feel like she might need to work more on her face-up game? It looked like she was trying too hard to calculate complicated shots instead of taking better shots. Shekinna Stricklen got her name mispronounced all night, unless she's gone and changed the pronunciation, and I feel like she could have been used more than she was. Her size is a huge advantage, and we are not good at defending the three. We didn't get out on her.

Alex Bentley was a negative for her team, and part of why Williams got so much time. She took bad shots, and she seemed to get frustrated very quickly as the game went on. She's feast or famine, and tonight was not her night. Jasmine Thomas isn't brilliant, but she's solid, and she does a lot on both ends of the floor. Her offense seems to rely very heavily on luck. Probably not the point guard of the future, but she gets the job done for now. She really got screwed on a play where Brittany Boyd should have been called for a dead ball foul- and she couldn’t argue too much because she already had a technical.

Chiney Ogwumike came like she was trying to prove that her sister wasn't the only one who can ball out like a boss. She was beasting on the boards, cleaning up all of her teammates' missed shots. She was physical defensively on Tina Charles, making Tina's life as miserable as possible. I think she got frustrated by the end of the game with the officiating, and with some of the bad passing from her teammates. But I think she's back from the knee surgery! Camille Little really seemed to be emphasizing her perimeter game, which makes sense with our defense. She's just really solid, and she's a good influence on that team. She works hard and it shows. Alyssa Thomas was very physical, but got frustrated with our defense. It looked like she was wearing the shoulder brace in the first half, but downgraded to just tape in the second half, possibly after accidentally smacking Rebecca Allen in the face with it. (There was a rather reddened line on Bec's forehead after Thomas attempted to put her at a right angle.) I'm not sure she's learned how to create offense by doing anything other than imitating a bull in a china shop.

Curt Miller, do stop yelling at the ref during the review. That's certainly not going to encourage them to decide things in your favor. Tiffany Bird did her best impression of an irritated Valkyrie at him. That being said, I like the energy and speed they play with. Lots of promise there.

Swin Cash came on stronger in the second half, with a couple of nice defensive plays and strong post moves. She was really hesitant in the first half, to the detriment of the offense- if you have the ball with two seconds left on the clock, shoot it! Amanda Zahui B was strong in the post, but has got to learn to play defense with something more than just her hands. She reaches way too much. She had trouble with her passing, too, something she's usually stronger at. Epiphanny Prince looked like she still had rust to shake off- there was one freaky moment in the second quarter where it looked like she jammed her knee and had to come out of the game. She came back, and she came back stronger, going to the basket and hitting threes with equal aplomb.

Rebecca Allen is equal to the task offensively, but her defense needs work. This was not a night when she covered herself in glory. Carolyn Swords was solid on the inside, making herself available when the defense somehow managed to misplace a stocky 6'6" blonde. Tina Charles started off hot, and kept up on the boards. We thought she had more steals than the box score shows- she's really been showing her defensive range lately. I don't like plans where she's guarding point guards, but she hasn't been terrible at it. Her dad brought the MVP sign that Connecticut gave out a few years ago and was egging on the crowd for the "M-V-P!" chant a few times in the fourth quarter. (We've got one of those signs on the wall at home!) (Along with an LJ one and an EDD one.)

Brittany Boyd continues in her quest to slow the game down for herself, and this time she went too far. To be fair, it wasn't completely her. Learning to harness speed and the changing pace of the game is hard for a player whose game has so heavily been predicated on go-go-go. She fell back into that habit in the second half, when things got ragged. But I love to death her grit, her tenacity, and her hustle. She ran straight on into the boards early in the game after a loose ball, and that's the kind of thing that makes people cheer for her. Sugar Rodgers showed spark in the passing lanes as well as from beyond the arc. She's showing her toughness off the court in her play. I propose that if she can get that floater in the lane to fall consistently, a la Mark Jackson, we dub it the Sugar Drop.

Too many extra passes worry me- I lost track of the shot clock violations, but I think there were four or five possessions that either ended in shot clock violations, hurried shots to avoid shot clock violations, or fumbles on extra passes that were rapidly leading to shot clock violations. This is where we miss Tanisha- while Brittany can run the point, no one else seems truly comfortable in the role of ballhandler, and no one seems certain of their role in the offense, other than Tina. Everything is going to Tina, and other teams are noticing.

Players do stupid things when they're tired. Players do lazy things when they're tired. It was a sloppy, physical game even before players started getting tired, so you can imagine that the fourth quarter was even worse.

That was a gritty win for the Liberty. Four players out is no laughing matter, even if most of them are reserves. We showed our moxie in this one, but we also showed the things we need to fix if we're going to escape a single-elimination game.