CHICAGO — Sabrina Ionescu didn’t look like herself for most of Wednesday night. She struggled and didn’t score her first points until the 4:26 mark of the third quarter.
But Ionescu shone brightest when the Liberty needed her the most.
She drained a timely go-ahead 3-pointer late in the fourth, a precursor to her game-winning layup.
Ionescu’s late-game heroics, paired with Jonquel Jones’s nine-point fourth quarter, helped the Liberty survive for a 96-95 victory against the Chicago Sky, extending New York’s win streak to eight.
“She’s a champion,” coach Chris DeMarco said of Ionescu. “She’s been in a million of these games, she understands the winning game, she made a nice play at the end, she competed and got herself back in and hit a big 3.”
Ionescu, who missed three weeks with back soreness, knew it would take time to find her footing in the new system. She replaced Pauline Astier in the starting lineup Wednesday after coming off the bench in the previous game.
She got off to a slow start. But she finished with 10 points and three rebounds.
“It’s going to be difficult as we ease her back in for everybody, find the right combinations, right sets defensively, how we’re going to play and you don’t play it all year and now you’re right back in the mix,” DeMarco said. “So just take some time, but I thought she did a really good job of staying with it.”
When Ionescu and Marine Johannès struggled early, the bench stepped up.
Satou Sabally scored 17 points on 8-for-11 shooting and Rebekah Gardner added 10 to lead the Liberty in outscoring the Sky’s bench 38-14.
“This is exactly what makes our basketball team,” Sabally said. “Everyone is important, and that we’re just carrying each other, it doesn’t matter who starts, who doesn’t start, we’re just all equal and I feel like we’re all contributing to a win.”
Jones said the Liberty’s depth is “the biggest thing” that separates New York from other contenders.
“Our depth is really special,” she said. “We have people that can come in and make an immediate impact. … We just have to continue to lean on that.”
The Sky started 3-1 the season but have gone completely off the rails since.
Entering Wednesday, they had lost nine of their previous 11. One of their top offseason acquisitions, Rickea Jackson, suffered a season-ending ACL tear last month. Courtney Vandersloot, one of the franchise’s most tenured players, has yet to return after injuring her knee a year ago.
But DeMarco wouldn’t be fooled by the challenge the Sky presented.
“They have a lot of talent,” DeMarco said of the Sky, “… definitely a dangerous team.”
The Sky pulled ahead by as many as 14 points in the first quarter.
The Liberty used a 22-6 run across the end of the first and into the second to take a one-point lead.
But the Sky never backed off. They kept pace with the Liberty, staying within three points for most of the third quarter.
Leonie Fiebich’s 3-pointer toward the end of the third gave the Liberty a six-point advantage, their largest lead of the night to that point.
Every time the Liberty seemed to build their lead back up, the Sky found a way to trim it, whether it was Taylor’s 3 cutting the Liberty’s lead to one or Elizabeth Williams’ deflection that forced a Breanna Stewart turnover.
Taylor secured the rebound off Stewart’s miss late in the game. Then she drained the go-ahead 3-pointer that sent the Wintrust Arena crowd to its feet.
But Ionescu silenced the crowd.
“We knew going in they were dangerous,” DeMarco reiterated following the game. “This is a really good team, there’s a lot of talent and they have shotmaking. … It’s really, really hard to win in this league. It’s hard.
“And I thought we did a great job of one, getting back into the game early, and then two, just we played with the lead, we lost, we fought back, made a play at the end, and then go to stop at the end, so again, we’re just continuing to build this season and I think for our character, this is a really good win.”
