Fever face Liberty with chance to start rare win streak
The Indiana Fever avoided dubious history Thursday by withstanding another monster game from Liz Cambage and beating the Dallas Wings.
Now they try to get something evading them for more than a year.
After the Fever (4-23) ensured they would not set a league record for the fewest wins in a season, they get a chance at consecutive wins Saturday afternoon with a visit to the New York Liberty at the Westchester Civic Center in White Plains, N.Y., in a meeting between the league's two worst teams.
Indiana needed one win in its last eight games to avoid setting the mark for fewest wins in league history and came out of the break with an 84-79 victory. Although the Fever allowed Cambage to score 37 points, they did enough things well, such as forcing 21 turnovers.
"We knew that our game plan was to double and make Liz see a lot of bodies, kind of like gnats," Fever guard Cappie Pondexter told reporters. "I think we did a good job of locking in and paying attention to our (scouting report) and making it tough for everybody around Liz to be effective."
Besides the aggressive defense resulting in turnovers, Pondexter led six players in double figures with 18 points as Indiana shot 46 percent.
The Fever are 2-2 in their last four games. Indiana will be going for consecutive wins for the first time since June 15-18 when it beat Atlanta and Chicago.
Their last chance at getting consecutive victories occurred July 22, two days after a two-point win at Los Angeles. In Las Vegas, they took an 88-74 loss and in the three chances to win consecutive games, the average margin is 20 points.
Two of Indiana's 23 losses occurred in a span of eight days to the Liberty.
On June 2 at Indiana, the Fever came back from a 20-point deficit to force overtime before losing 87-81. In White Plains, the Liberty escaped with a 78-75 win on a tiebreaking 3-pointer by Marissa Coleman with 16.1 seconds left.
Since those close wins for the Liberty, little has gone right. Coleman's shot improved New York to 3-4, but since then the Liberty are 4-15 in their last 19 games and 2-5 at home.
New York comes into the game on a five-game losing streak since consecutive wins at Connecticut and at home against Chicago on July 11-15. The average margin of defeat is 13.2 points.
The Liberty (7-19) are coming off a 92-77 loss at Connecticut on Wednesday when leading scorer Tina Charles was held to 12 points. They were outscored 44-28 after scoring the first 10 points of the second half.
Rookie Kia Nurse scored 34 points in the first meeting, but she has only topped double figures twice since June 22. Charles is the only player averaging double digits on a team that is 6 1/2 games out of the last playoff spot entering its final homestand.
"It's going to be rough to try to get in," New York coach Katie Smith told reporters recently. "But I think for us it's going out every night and being proud of what we did that night and proud of how we played, proud of our effort. It's tough to win in this league."
