The Guru’s WNBA Roundup: New York Avoids Upset by Newcomer Golden State While Chicago Edges Dallas for First Season Win; NCAA Field to Increase?

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

NEW YORK – Just two nights after New York plundered Golden State 95-67 here at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn the expansion Valkyries gave the defending WNBA champion Liberty all they could handle up to the final minute until the home team paced by 27 points from Breanna Stewart and 24 from Sabrina Ionescu emerged with a narrow 82-77 victory.

Thursday was the first time this season New York did not reach 90 points.

On the same night over in Manhattan where a crowd of 19,812 packed Madison Square Garden to see the NBA Knicks extended the best-of-seven Eastern Finals against the Indianapolis Pacers to 3-2 from the underside for the moment preventing a closeout, Barclays here was as full and loud as it has been all season — with a total of 14,951.

It’s  an interesting comparison to make because  in Thursday’s USA Today nationwide edition, the Gannett Publication had a headline-screaming layout that because Indiana’s Caitlin Clark was to be sidelined for a minimum four games the next two weeks due to a left quad injury the WNBA’s Sky was falling.

For one, then explain the crowd size here on the same night the Knicks were suited up. And the only Sky associated with the WNBA was one in Chicago, which topped Dallas and overall No. 1 pick Paige Bueckers 97-92 in Thursday’s other game played at Wintrust Arena before a crowd of 9,025 for the Windy City team’s first triumph of the season, snapping an opening four-game losing streak.

The visiting Wings (1-5) had gotten their first win on Tuesday leaving the Connecticut team they beat the last one still with a zero on the left side of the scoreboard with the Sun’s next chance to have WNBA media dispense with the word winless until the playoffs will occur on Friday’s five-game slate with a visit to Indiana at 7:30 p.m. in Gainbridge Fieldhouse.

All five games will be on ION and the WNBA’s streaming League Pass.

For two, the game on Wednesday between Washington and Indiana, Clark on the bench with the injury, drew 357,000 viewers, the 10th most watched WNBA game ever on NBA TV.

 That there’s been a Cloud among the Liberty players, that was not from above since it’s former Saint Joseph’s star Natasha Cloud, who arrived here in a trade from a short stay in Connecticut last winter after being dealt to the Sun from Phoenix and accounted for the game’s final points at the line to push the outcome away from Golden State completing a stunner.

It’s an interesting stretch for New York, in play the second of three games in four days.

The Liberty hit the road in the end of a back-to-back Friday night, visiting the Washington Mystics (3-3) at 7:30 p.m. at CareFirst Arena in the Southeast section of the nation’s capital across the Potomac from downtown.

Friday’s other three games have Los Angeles (2-4) at Las Vegas (2-2) at Michelob ULTRA Arena at 10 p.m., the same tip time as Minnesota (5-0) in a key game at Phoenix (4-1) at PHX Arena, while Atlanta (4-2) is at Seattle (3-2) at Climate Pledge Arena.

Back here in Brooklyn, where the teams kept trading leads across the second half, Stewart, who was 6-12 from the field and a whopping 15-19 from the line, hit two of those foul shots to get the Liberty back in front 78-77 with 1:35 left in regulation.

Attempting to regain the lead the Valkryies missed three straight shots from deep, lost the ball on a five-second penalty after a timeout that enabled New York to dribble away some clock before Cloud scored with 24 seconds left to make it 80-77.

Cecilia Zanadasini, part of a foreign corp in the way Golden State chose to build it’s roster, went for the tie but shot an air ball and Cloud finished it.

In all there were 20 swings and 16 ties in the game in which actor Jackie Chan was among the celebrities here in the crowd.

Before the game he met with Ionescu and Golden State coach Natalie Nakase, the league’s first Asian American head coach. She had been on Becky Hammon’s staff in Las Vegas and played at UCLA.

Janelle Salaun had 18 points and 13 boards for Golden State, which soon will have to deal with a brief period in which many of its players will go back to their homes across the Atlantic playing in the Euro championship pursuit.

The Valkyries play the other unbeaten team in Minnesota Sunday hosting the Lynx at Chase Arena in San Francisco, the day the two-week Commissioner’s Cup series gets under way in which all the teams within the East and West meet each other home-and-home and then the best in each division meet for the championship and a sizeable financial prize.

Though this series has teams meeting within Divisions the eight who make the playoffs are seeded overall without regard to their geographical classification.

Had New York reached 90 points again, the Liberty would have matched the 2023 champion Las Vegas start doing it five straight times to start the season.

The Liberty were able to win without finals MVP Jonquel Jones, who was suffering a right hamstring situation.

Chicago Clips Dallas

While Paige Bueckers last month at Connecticut and Angel Reese in 2023 at Las Vegas each won NCAA titles in their collegiate careers, the two sensations had never met in regular season or national tournament competition.

That finally happened Thursday in the other game on the WNBA card with Reese’s Chicago squad (1-4) finally getting a season win against Bueckers’ Dallas group.

The two will quickly meet again, playing in Saturday’s only game in Texas switching sites and playing at 8 p.m. on League Pass.

In the Windy City, the Sky’s second-year pro Kamilla Cardoso out of South Carolina’s 2024 championship had a career-best 23 points, while Courtney Vandersloot, who returned to the Sky in free agency from New York’s champions, set career records for the franchise in points and field goals.

Dallas had a season-high performer in hot scorer Arike Ogunbowale, the former Notre Dame standout, who had 37 points for the Wings, who went ahead on Chicago with her three-pointer 92-91 with 2:11 left in regulation.

But then she was scoreless the rest of the way and the Sky finished with a 6-0 run to gain the victory.

Vandersloot had 13 points, nine assists and four steals to move past her wife Allie Quigley with career totals of 3,728 points and 1,394 field goals.

Quigley, who starred at DePaul in Chicago, had 3,273 points and 1,386 field goals in a career that spanned from 2013 to 2022 that included one championship.

Bueckers, who had a breakout game in Tuesday’s win at Connecticut, shot 6-11 from the field for 15 points with five boards and eight assists, while Reese had six points and nine rebounds.

Dallas also got 15 points from Dijonai Carrington and 10 points from Myisha Hines-Allen, while reserve Teaira McCowan grabbed eight boards.

Former Villanova star Maddy Siegriest, who went third overall in the 2023 draft, scored five points with three boards off the bench.

Chicago’s Ariel Atkins was also in double figures with 17 points and Rebecca Allen had 13 points off the bench.

NCAA Field to Enlarge?

While the WNBA talk in recent seasons of expansion has involved teams, with Golden State  breaking the long drought since the last new addition and Toronto and Portland to follow with at least one more in the current cycle, expansion in the NCAA has to do with the size of tournament fields.

President Charlie Baker at the Big 12 spring meeting in Orlando revealed the potential to have the size grow from 68 to 72 or 76 this coming season to involve more at-large teams.

That would have an effect on the women’s field, which grew to 68 to match the men in the wake of the independent investigation involving equity in the two events launched after complaints involving the women’s tournament in 2021, the games all played in San Antonio in a bubble due to the CoVid crisis in the nation.

Since, whenever the subject came up of growing field size for the men, comments were made the increase would also involve the women.

Several sources involving the women’s decisions said that would be the expectation, the next time to look for some news would be in July when both tournament committees have their annual summer meetings.

Had the suggested size been in place in recent seasons both Villanova and Saint Joseph’s would have easily made the event.

One thought though, while women’s basketball is exploding the question is whether the quality is that deep, enough to wonder if the first two rounds would see more lopsided outcomes.

However, if the early matches were structured more like a play-in nature as is the case with the First Four, then likes meeting each other early would cause more competitiveness.

Stay tuned.