MONTREAL — Sabrina Ionescu and Breanna Stewart’s desperation was evident Sunday.
The tag team did its best to will the Liberty to a win a day after New York’s second-half rally fell short in Minneapolis.
Stewart scored 18 of her 22 points in the second half. Ionescu recorded 12 of her team-high 28 points in the fourth quarter. Together, they helped the fatigued Liberty erase the Toronto Tempo’s 15-point lead.
New York played with heart and grit, but it ultimately wasn’t enough as the Tempo won 93-91.
“We had a great group out there that played as hard as they could, tried to get stops, push the ball in transition, but it’s a matter of will and want,” Ionescu said. “And I’d say everyone that stepped out in that second half especially, played with a lot of assertiveness and try to do everything you could to get a win.”
It was a tough break for the Liberty, who lately have made a habit of falling into double-digit holes.
The Liberty have trailed by 13-plus points in five of their past seven games, going 0-5 in those situations.
Stewart had no answer for why the Liberty keep finding themselves in disadvantageous situations.
The Liberty are 5-6 in clutch games, tied for 10th out of 15 teams.
The Liberty pointed to a bizarre sequence Sunday — in which Betnijah Laney-Hamilton was ejected for throwing a teammate’s shoe that accidentally hit Marina Mabrey — as stifling their momentum.
But rookie Pauline Astier believes the Liberty need to “wake up earlier” and take control sooner.
“We should do it for all the game, not the last quarter or the second half,” Astier told The Post. “We did the same in Minnesota, we just came back in the game, but it’s not enough … We have to be better for all 40 minutes long.”
If the Liberty play better in the first half, Astier believes confidence will carry over to the second half and help with late-game execution.
“We’re gonna have more confidence if we play a full game, like 100 percent,” she said. “If we all communicate more, it’s gonna be easier if we are doing this all the game. And at the end, we’re gonna be more confident, to take the shot, to take the rebound, to control the last possession … If we do this all the game, we’re gonna be I don’t know maybe up 20 and we don’t have to deal with the last possession, so yeah, I just try to be more consistent all the game.”