Late Rally Pushes Shock Past Liberty; Forces Game Three

By David Nows: SPM Detroit Writer
Posted Monday, September 29, 2008

Deanna Nolan had a game-high 22 points to lead the Shock. Photo by Lynn Gregg.

YPSILANTI, Mich. - "It’s win or go home, and I don’t want to go home yet."

The words spoken by Detroit Shock forward Plenette Pierson were all one really need to know about Sunday afternoon’s Game Two of the Eastern Conference Finals. Down by as many as eight, and trailing by seven heading into the final quarter, the Shock emerged victorious 64-55 over the New York Liberty to force a deciding Game Three Monday night at Eastern Michigan University’s Convocation Center.

"We just had to persevere through all of our hardships," Shock coach Bill Laimbeer said, "Overall, we’ll take it."

One player in particular made it possible for Detroit to cope with those hardships -- Deanna Nolan. Nolan came out of the gates ablaze, scoring nine straight Shock points in the early going to keep Detroit close. However, Nolan was quiet for considerable amount of time after her hot start, only managing four more points by the end of three quarters. Down seven at that point, Nolan took over, scoring nine in the final period and leading Detroit to a 25-9 fourth-quarter advantage.

"I had to stop shooting jumpers," Nolan said, "I was getting hit on the arm every time, and the refs weren’t seeing it, so I had to scratch that, quit shooting jumpers, and start taking it to the basket."

Nolan’s words were tough to argue, as she shot all seven of her free throws in the fourth, all of which were makes. Also, out of her 22 shot attempts, only two came in the final ten minutes.

Outside of Nolan, scoring was hard to come by for the Shock. Only Katie Smith and Plenette Pierson joined Nolan in double figures for Detroit with 11 and 10 apiece respectively. Detroit shot 33 percent through the first three quarters, but turned it around shooting seven-for-ten in the last period.

Pierson’s 10 points off the bench for Detroit were just part of what she brought to the table in Game Two, as it was her first action since her separated shoulder suffered in Game Two of the Eastern Conference Semifinals against Indiana.

"She gave us what we needed off the bench," Nolan said referring to the performance of Pierson. "As you can see, she fought through pain tonight. I’m sure on a scale of one to ten that pain was probably a twenty, but she played through it."

The story was entirely different for New York, as they shot 42 percent through three quarters and seemingly led throughout. However, the Liberty came out flat in the fourth, shooting three-for-fourteen from the field and giving up a 11-3 run to begin the quarter, as well as at one point giving up 11 points of ground in about a four minute time span.

"For three quarters we played really well on both ends of the floor," Liberty coach Patty Coyle said, "Early in the fourth quarter we missed a couple of shots, and I think it just rattled us."

All of New York’s fourth-quarter points came off 3-pointers, as Shameka Christon, Loree Moore, and Erin Thorn were the only three Liberty players to connect in the final period. Christon led New York with 16 points and was joined by none of her teammates in double figures. Janel McCarville followed up her stellar performance in Friday night’s Game One with nine points and five rebounds for New York, and starting forward Cathrine Kraayeveld shot three-for-fourteen from the field, including one-for-seven from three-point range. She finished with seven points and nine rebounds.

"We took too many threes," said Coyle, "This is playoff basketball, and it’s hard to move because there’s so much holding and grabbing, it’s tough to move to get any position in the paint, and I think we just ended up settling for too many threes."

Game Three of this series Monday night will be deja vu for these two teams, as they played each other to a deciding third game in the Eastern Conference Semifinals last year. Detroit went on to win the series and eerily the first two games of that series were quite similar to the last two contests. New York took Game One last year and controlled Game Two only to lose at the end just as they did Sunday afternoon. Liberty fans can only hope that the outcome of Game Three is different this time when they face the Shock Monday night at 7pm on ESPN2.

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