Sports

Struggling Liberty fall to Fever

After a sluggish first half for both teams, Indiana picked up its play in the third quarter. When the Liberty nearly got even early in the fourth, the Fever again ran away.

Tamika Catchings scored 22 points and Katie Douglas had 15 to lead the Fever to a 76-63 victory over the Liberty on Thursday night in Newark. Shavonte Zellous added 11 points to help the Fever (16-8) win their fourth straight and sixth in seven games since the league’s month-long Olympic break.

Cappie Pondexter and Essence Carson had 18 points each, and Nicole Powell added 12 for the Liberty (9-16), which lost its third straight and fifth of its last seven.

The Liberty finished with a 35-25 rebounding edge, but committed 21 turnovers — leading to 20 points for Indiana. The Liberty also finished the night 2-for-3 on free throws while Indiana was 14-for-21.

“We turn the ball over 21 times, any team would capitalize off that and Indiana did,” Pondexter said. “We were a step slow and it could be a number of reasons, coming off a nine-day round trip and one day to prepare. There has to be a sense of urgency at the beginning of the game not the fourth quarter.”

The Liberty, who dropped a half-game behind Chicago for the fourth and final playoff spot in the East, lost three of five on their road swing and began a stretch of six straight and seven of the last 10 at home.

“We’re going to keep plugging and we feel like we can make the playoffs,” Liberty coach John Whisenant said. “If we can just correct some of our flaws, then that’s what we’re going to try and do.”

The Fever remained 2¹/₂ games behind first-place Connecticut in the Eastern Conference with 10 games remaining. Atlanta, which has eight left, is four games behind Indiana.

“This was a game we needed to win,” Catchings said. “We came out really focused and determined to do a good job. I don’t think we started the game off the way that we should’ve and are capable of. The third quarter in the first couple of minutes, we got the rhythm getting up and down the court.”

Trailing by 10 about midway through the third quarter, the Liberty used a 12-3 run over a 4:10 stretch, capped by 3-pointers from Powell and Carson to cut the deficit to 43-42 with 1:15 left in the third.

Zellous made a 3 for Indiana 26 seconds later to push the margin back to four, and the Fever took a 49-46 lead into the fourth. Pondexter and Carson sandwiched layups for the Liberty around a jumper by Jessica Davenport to pull the Liberty to 51-50 with 9:10 remaining in the game.

Nevertheless, Indiana scored the next 12 points to regain a double-digit lead. Catchings had two free throws, Douglas made a 3-pointer, Davenport had two layups and Jeanette Pohlen added a 3 to push the Fever’s lead to 63-50 with 6:10 to go.

The Liberty made one more run, scoring five consecutive points, capped by a layup from Carson to cut the deficit to 65-58 about 2 ¹/₂ minutes later. But that was as close as they got.

“We knew when we pulled ahead, they were still going to have a run left in them and they made that run,” Fever coach Lin Dunn said. “When they decided to go to the 3-2 zone, I thought that really helped us. It slowed them down a little bit, it stopped some of Cappie’s penetration. We got a couple of steals out of it and were able to get up by 10 and that was the difference in the ball game.”

Erin Phillips made a jumper and Douglas hit two free throws to extend Indiana’s margin to 69-58 with 2:50 to go, and the Fever led by at least eight the rest of the way.