The Liberty turned to the WNBA’s 2023 regular-season MVP with their game — and season — on the line, but she couldn’t come through.
In the final moments of the 70-69 loss to a depleted Aces squad Wednesday night, Breanna Stewart was given the ball out of a timeout with 8.8 seconds left and looked for a shot in the paint, but was denied by Alysha Clark.
Stewart passed the ball off to Betnijah Laney, who found Courtney Vandersloot in the corner. But Vandersloot’s 3-point try was off to the right at the buzzer, leaving the Aces as the first back-to-back WNBA champions in 21 years.
“I put the ball in the hands of the MVP because we trust her. And it just didn’t work out today,” Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello said after her team was beaten 3-1 in the best-of-five series. “It ended up with Breanna at the end, so it was just her trying to make a play from there. So, I [would] still do it again. That’s the right call.”
It was a last effort for Stewart to deliver after a dismal night. But she failed and the sorrow could be easily read on her face.
“High,” Stewart said when asked about her level of disappointment.
The Aces had Stewart’s number. They held the two-time MVP, two-time WNBA champ, and five-time All-Star to 3-for-17 shooting from the field for a mere 10 points. They also held Jonquel Jones to six points on 3-for-8 shooting.
The champions owned the paint, scoring 44 points against the Liberty’s 24.
“We knew what their game plan was going to be to like chuck it up and make it difficult and that’s exactly what happened,” Stewart said. “Couldn’t get anything to drop and I mean, credit to Vegas. They played well, but we wanted to, obviously, push it to Game 5.”
The 10 points were the fewest Stewart scored in a game this postseason.
“I think they would just throw whatever defense they had at us and make sure it was ugly,” Stewart said. “Sometimes we lost our flow and our ball movement, but [we were] confident behind all the shots that we got, and they just didn’t go in.”