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“I wanted it.”
Those were the first words out of the mouth of the New York Liberty’s Sabrina Ionescu, who hit back-to-back dagger three-pointers to get a 90-87 win over the Indiana Fever to open the WNBA regular season from Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Saturday night.
SABRINA FOR THE WIN. ICE COLD ❄️ pic.twitter.com/XEHFXemqGv
— ESPN (@espn) May 15, 2021
Here’s another angle with the fans going nuts.
SABRINA IS DIFFERENT. Liberty lead with 0.4 seconds to go!! #OwnTheCrown pic.twitter.com/hgiWQWJCjJ
— Her Hoop Stats (@herhoopstats) May 15, 2021
Ionescu scored the last eight points of the game to seal the win, and actually hit another off-balance three two possessions earlier to keep the Liberty in it. She finished with 25 points on 7-18 shooting with 11 assists and six rebounds, with many of those assists to Betnijah Laney, who led all scorers with 30 points on 11-18 from the floor.
While the Liberty will need to get better on the glass after being outrebounded 45-28 as a team, including 19-3 on the offensive boards, they’ve clearly got the next superstar in women’s basketball wearing sea foam for potentially a decade or more.
Get your jerseys now, she’s already got her own Nike’s.