Bec Allen season-high and balanced scoring sees Phoenix Mercury upset New York Liberty
Playing against her former team, Mercury forward Bec Allen scored 17 points and shot 5-for-7 from three in Tuesday's victory over the New York Liberty.
PHOENIX — Phoenix Mercury forward Bec Allen exploded for a season-high 17 points to help the Mercury upset the New York Liberty 99-93 at Footprint Center on Tuesday.
It was a seismic win for the Mercury (8-7) who not only improved to above .500 for the first time since May 28, but also snapped the Liberty’s (12-3) eight-game winning streak (which included four games on the road).
Allen, who spent seven seasons with the Liberty, shot 6-for-8 from the field and 5-for-7 from three. Her five 3-pointers on Tuesday put her one shy of her career-high.
It was also the first game of Allen’s career with at least 15 points, five made 3-pointers and seven rebounds.
“New York is a quality team, so to come out with a win tonight, especially with how many threes they made, says a lot about the grit of our team,” Allen said. New York tied a franchise record with 18 made 3-pointers.
“The way we moved the ball was a really fun style to play. I know collectively as a group we are really up about this win because everyone feels that they’ve contributed, and on the defensive end we were really locking down,” Allen said.
The Mercury acquired Allen in a sign-and-trade deal with the Connecticut Sun in February for guard Moriah Jefferson after the Australian had a standout year in 2023.
Allen played in all 40 games last season and, along with New York’s Breanna Stewart, was one of only two players in the league to record at least 40 3-pointers and 50 blocks (and only eight players have done that in league history).
But Allen hasn’t had the best luck this year. Allen suffered a head injury in the Mercury’s loss to the Dallas Wings on May 25 and missed five games due to a concussion. Before that, she also suffered a hip injury and was sidelined for a preseason game in Seattle.
“I am super proud of (Allen),” Mercury coach Nate Tibbetts said. “This is a new team and when we came together in training camp, she missed a couple days because of injury. Then she had the concussion, missed five-and-a-half games. I think everyone has been comfortable in their roles. Of the new pieces, it’s probably taken (Allen) the most time to find her way.
“Tonight is the (Allen) that we want, and I hope that she wants, and it was a hell of a performance by her. It is not even about the makes to me. I mean, what she does at the defensive end, we don’t talk about enough. The way she guards those guards. Her willingness to take seven threes tonight was huge and we are going to need that moving forward. We need her with that mentality – just let it fly. Because we’ve got other playmakers, her spacing the floor was huge tonight. They saw her seeing the shot go down but she was the difference.
“I’m really happy for (Allen) because she chose us in free agency (sign-and-trade), and you want her to have a great experience and I think she has. You want to make an impact at both ends and she did that tonight, and I’m just so happy for her.”
Tuesday’s game was a much-needed confidence booster for Allen who came in averaging 6.1 points per game (her lowest total since 2018) and shooting 28.6% from three (well below her 36% career average).
Her shooting performance on Tuesday suggested Allen could have finally found her rhythm.
“ … (Allen) finally had her night,” Mercury guard Sophie Cunningham said. “We were all waiting for it. And it’s awesome to see. You’re actually excited for your teammates when you see ‘em going off and it’s not a selfish type thing. When you really care for people off the court, and I think again our culture it’s all about caring, it’s about making sure people our good, it’s nights like this that make it so fun.”
In addition to Allen, the Mercury had five other players score in double figures. The Mercury’s six players in double figures, tied a league-high this season (Chicago Sky, Connecticut Sun).
“That balance that we got tonight that’s going to be a strength of ours moving forward and we have to be OK with each other succeeding,” Tibbetts said. “It doesn’t have to be one person going for this and the other person going for that. We can do it together. I think they believe in that, they saw it tonight.”
The Mercury had 24 assists on Tuesday and recorded a franchise record of four consecutive games with at least 24 assists.
Kahleah Copper finished with 17 points and seven assists; Brittney Griner added 19 points and two assists; Diana Taurasi had 19 points and five assists; Natasha Cloud recorded 11 points and four assists and Cunningham tallied 13 points and two assists.
It was a night when everything was clicking for Phoenix. This season the Mercury have struggled shooting the ball at times. They entered shooting 42% from the field on average (which ranked them in the bottom half of the league), but on Tuesday the Mercury shot 38-for-69 from the field (55.1%) and 15-for-30 from three (50%).
In addition, the Mercury had 30 points in the paint on 15-of-27 shooting (55.6%) a respectable percentage as New York entered having held opponents to a league-low 52.8% on shots within five feet of the rim and 56.4% in the restricted area this season.
On Tuesday, the Mercury also limited New York to 32-for-75 (42.7%) from the field and 18-for-41 (43.9%) from three.
Entering Tuesday, the Liberty’s 63.3% on shots within five feet of the rim, 44.5% on shots between five and nine feet, and 48.8% on shots between 10 and 14 feet each led the league.
While Stewart had 28 points on 10-for-15 shooting, Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu had 19 points on 6-for-20 shooting. She started 3-for-6 from the field but finished 3-for-14 from the field in the final three quarters.
“I mean they were up to touch,” Ionescu said about the Mercury’s defense. “Obviously, understanding that’s what we were getting in the first half, I believe that was their kind of adjustment going into the second half. (They were) just fighting over (those) and contesting a lot of those shots, more continuing to kind of build a wall behind the ball and make things difficult. Obviously, with them scoring we weren’t running out in transition as much as we were in the first half.”
Despite the Liberty’s continuity as a unit and their identity as a team that’s known to be efficient from the field, the Mercury’s defense proved to be the difference maker in the end. In the fourth quarter, the Liberty shot 4-for-13 (30.8%) from the field.
“That team (New York) has been together for a hot minute,” Cunningham said. “They know how each other plays, they know where some people lack and then they pick up. We’re all new to each other, and for us and how we are right now at this point in the season, it’s a testament of what we’re trying to build here. When you can be clear and be on the same page about what type of defensive schemes – they had 18 threes, but we didn’t let that bother us. That’s a lot, for us not to get bothered and stay true to what the gameplan was, I think that is a testament of trusting the coaches.”
The Mercury are now one win away from matching their entire win total from last year. In addition to the acquisitions of Copper, Cloud and Allen, the biggest difference maker for the Mercury this year is the team’s culture and the man behind that, coach Tibbetts.
“My first day he was so accepting,” Allen said about Tibbetts. “Everyone came up to me and I just felt like I was really welcomed in and it’s just a group that you want to be a part of. You’re playing with some of the best players in the league, so I just think that the culture, we make sure is worked on every single day. It’s not just a touchpoint at the start, it’s continuous. I think that (Tibbetts) and the coaching staff are the ones that really bring that every day and we follow.”
The Mercury will now head to Minnesota to play the Lynx (11-3) on Saturday at 5 p.m. MST. The game can be watched on Arizona’s Family Sports or streamed on Mercury Live.
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