Sabrina Ionescu powers Liberty past Dream and into WNBA semifinals

The reaction from Sabrina Ionescu — the two fists clenched as she turned down the court, the roar as she crossed the white line at the center, all of it — captured everything.

The MVP chants that accompanied her final free throws of the night minutes later did, too.

Leonie Fiebich had just finished an and-one underneath the basket midway through the fourth quarter, an assist from Ionescu, her ninth of the night, serving as the catalyst.

The Liberty, once on upset alert in Game 2 against the Dream, went up by eight after the free throw. They extended that to 11 — their largest of the game — when Fiebich hit a 3 on the next possession.

But on a night when Atlanta adjusted to most of what went wrong in Game 1, and on a night the Liberty struggled to replicate most of what went right, Ionescu was at the center of everything.

The Liberty needed every one of her playoff career-high 36 points in their 91-82 win to sweep the Dream and advance to the WNBA semifinals, where a WNBA Finals rematch against the Aces could await.

Ionescu shot 12-of-23 from the field, hit 5-of-11 3s and the player who arrived as the No. 1 pick in 2020, emerged as the cornerstone the Liberty could build around and now has a chance to anchor their run back to the finals delivered a vintage performance.

Eleven of those points came in the third quarter, when Ionescu abandoned 3-point shots and just kept driving. She hit a layup. Then, a mid-range jumper and another layup.

It helped the Liberty keep pace after entering halftime trailing by five.

Eventually, in the fourth quarter, Ionescu helped them pull away.