Cambage to take on arch-rival
NEWLY crowned WNBA scoring champion Liz Cambage won’t have it easy when she leads the Dallas Wings against the Phoenix Mercury in their sudden-death play- off.
The 203cm Australian, who averaged a WNBA-best 23 points a game during the regular season, including a league record 53 in one outing, will go head-to-head with the Mercury’s 206cm five-time All-Star centre Brittney Griner in Arizona 10.30am AEST today.
Griner will have a game plan drawn up by Mercury coach Sandy Brondello, who also coaches the Australian Olympic team and intimately knows Cambage’s strengths and weaknesses.
“Liz is hands down a great post player,” Griner, last year’s WNBA scoring leader and a member of Team USA’s 2016 Olympic gold medal-winning squad, told the Arizona Republic newspaper yesterday.
“What she’s done this season, we defi- nitely don’t want to overlook. We know she can put up numbers.”
The Mercury also features Cambage’s Opals teammates, forward Stephanie Talbot and back-up guard Leilani Mitchell, and is led by one of the WNBA’s greats, American guard Diana Taurasi.
Cambage will be supported by Australian back-up centre Cayla George and American All-Star guard Skylar Diggins-Smith.
“We’ve got to make sure we’re keeping them out of the paint and contesting without fouling,” said Brondello, a four-time Australian Olympian as a player. “Make sure we’re doing a good job on Cambage and Diggins, who get a lot of shots.”
The Mercury, seeded fifth for the playoffs, won two of the three regular-season meetings with the Wings this year.
The Wings, who clawed their way into the play-offs with the eighth and final seed, beat the Mercury 101-72 last time.