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There's no denying the Golden State Valkyries have challenged some of the toughest teams in the WNBA. With close losses to the Phoenix Mercury and the Minnesota Lynx, as well as big wins versus the Indiana Fever and Las Vegas Aces, the Valkyries are going to compete no matter the opponent. But pecking at the best teams in the league isn't enough for Golden State, especially after a tight 81-78 loss to the New York Liberty.
After the game, Valkyries guard Kate Martin spoke on balancing the frustration of coming up short in these close games with the fact that they are competing with the elite of the W.
“Yeah, I mean, we're close, we don't really care about being close,” Martin said. She finished with a team-high 21 points, 19 of which came in the 2nd half and 14 in the fourth. “We want to win, you know? Like, we want to win, and that's our goal every night. We don't care if it's the defending champs, we don't care who you are, our goal is to win. Our goal is to control what we can control and go out there and give our best effort every single night.”
It was the Valkyries' third loss this season to the Liberty. And it was another game that came down to several 50-50 possessions late in the fourth quarter. A bad Stephanie Talbot turnover down 77-75 with 1:37 left in the game and Tiffany Hayes getting picked by Sabrina Ionescu doomed the Valkyries in the fourth and spoiled both players' holistically good nights otherwise.
Natalie Nakase echoes Kate Martin's assessment
In her own post-game press conference, Valkyries head coach Natalie Nakase was told about Martin's perspective on the team's close losses and agreed with her player.
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“There's some things we have to get right. But yeah, I do agree with Kate. We don't care what the score ended up being or whatever,” Nakase said. “We want to win. And you could see it, you could feel it with our players, and that's what I love about our players.”
For Nakase, she was less concerned about how the Valkyries closed and more focused on how they opened.
We let them score 46 in the first half. [Breanna Stewart] had 21 [first-half points]. That wasn't part of the game plan,” Nakase said. “So, for us, we had to clean that up, and then obviously we made the adjustment at halftime. [Our players] were, position-wise, body-wise area, in the right exact spots. But they just weren't there in the first half. And so to me, I'll never always put it at the end of the game, with the one shot. You can never put that much [on that]. Like the possessions in the first and second, to me, were the ones where we slipped.”
However, the Valkyries made some important halftime adjustments. They fixed their first-half rebounding issue, limited Stewart to two second-half points, and kept Ionescu and Natasha Cloud in check. Those are a few moral victories to carry forward.
Regardless, Golden State doesn't have time to debate whether or not they are happy about being in tight games with good teams. With two more home games in the next four days, followed by a long road trip, the Valkyries aren't stewing on this loss to the Liberty.
“Some nights it's gonna swing your way, and some nights it's not,” Martin said in the same press conference. “We're just gonna have to learn from it. One thing about us is we're not going to stay down. We're not going to sulk, we're not going to hang our heads, you know? We're just going to come back swinging in the next game.”
