This was exactly what worried Sandy Brondello. The Mystics were better than their sub-.500 record.
They were better than their No. 7 seed entering the postseason, too.
It’s why Brondello, the head coach of the Liberty, cautioned the Mystics are “not a seven seed, put it that way.” Washington forward Tianna Hawkins said before the game the Mystics are an “underrated” threat. And then Brittney Sykes — a former first-round pick and an offseason addition to the core of Washington’s 2019 WNBA title team that is still intact — hit a game-winning floater with 0.5 seconds left to defeat the Liberty, 90-88, at Barclays Center on Sunday in a preview of their best-of-three series that begins this week.
On the final play, Natasha Cloud lofted a pass over Jonquel Jones, while Sykes elevated past Breanna Stewart’s outstretched arms to score just before the buzzer sounded.
It was the “perfect pass” and a “difficult shot,” Brondello said, and across 40 minutes — and especially in the final tenths of the final second — Washington demonstrated just how difficult a first-round opponent the Liberty (32-8) will face in their series beginning Friday.
“Things weren’t easy for us tonight, and we continued to kinda battle through it,” Stewart said. “We could’ve thrown in the towel because we know that we match up against them, but we wanted to compete and we continued to do that and trying to make big plays down the stretch.”
Before the game, Brondello called the Mystics a “top-four seed” when healthy — a ceiling the Mystics started their climb toward by crushing the Liberty in the season opener.
Injuries prevented them from replicating that, as Elena Delle Donne, Ariel Atkins and Shakira Austin all missed extended time.
But Washington demonstrated its potential again Sunday, holding Stewart to three points through three quarters while Sykes finished with 20 points and Cloud added 17 to snap the Liberty’s eight-game winning streak.
It took a furious last-minute rally for the Liberty to even make the game close, with Stewart hitting the game-tying shot with 21 seconds left and then blocking Delle Donne’s game-winning attempt in the final seconds.
The loss ended the Liberty’s chance at the No. 1 seed, too. It was an outside shot that hinged on the Las Vegas Aces losing their season finale and different tiebreakers tilting in their favor, so the probable chance of the Liberty and Mystics meeting in the postseason turned Sunday’s game into a case study of which players would play, how many minutes they would log and to what degree the Liberty and Mystics would reveal their adjustments.
Then, it turned into a thriller. They were tied at 50 after 20 minutes, and neither team’s lead extended past eight until a 13-2 run by the Mystics in the third quarter.
“We can definitely learn from it,” Stewart said. “You could say today was a playoff game or playoff atmosphere.”
Stewart shot just 4-for-17 from the field (nine points), though she said postgame that she “got good looks” that just didn’t fall. Sabrina Ionescu led the Liberty with 20 points, while Jones finished one rebound shy of a double-double (19 points, nine rebounds).
Most of all, Brondello wanted her players to find a rhythm.
The Liberty hadn’t played the Mystics since July, so they wanted to discover Washington’s evolutions across the past six weeks. Brondello said Cloud and Sykes “could do whatever they wanted” early in the game, adding that the Liberty needed to be more physical defensively.
Still, despite trailing by 12 with 6:35 remaining, the Liberty chipped away until Courtney Vandersloot and Stewart scored to even it at 88.
Then, the Mystics gave them a final reminder. It was from Sykes. It was in the form of a stunning game-winning shot.
And it showed just how difficult a playoff run this could be for the Liberty, especially with Washington as their first obstacle.
