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Nolan's double-double leads Shock past Liberty

Aug 5, 2009 - 3:37 AM AUBURN HILLS, Mich.(AP) -- Deanna Nolan has always been one of the WNBA's most dangerous scorers.

On Tuesday night, she showed a surprising new side to her game.

The 5-foot-9 Nolan added a career-high 14 rebounds to her 26 points as the Detroit Shock beat the New York Liberty 76-64.

"After we were so bad Sunday, we knew we had to pick things up defensively," she said, referring to Detroit's 83-65 home loss to Connecticut. "I was just going to go after every long rebound, and I got a lot of them."

Nolan's performance impressed teammate Cheryl Ford, one of the best rebounders in league history.

"If Tweet is going to get that many rebounds, it is going to make my life a lot easier," Ford said. "When she's getting those, I can breathe."

Nolan struggled with injuries through the first half of the season, but has averaged 22.7 points in three games since the All-Star break.

"I'm finally getting close to 100 percent," she said. "My knee is better, my shoulder is better - the whole right side of my body is feeling better."

Katie Smith added 16 points for the Shock (7-10), who won for the fifth time in eight games.

"We're starting to achieve some of the goals that we've set for the second half of the season," Detroit coach Rick Mahorn said. "We finally played 40 minutes tonight. We know that if we want to make the playoffs, we've got to start winning our conference games."

Shameka Christon scored 14 points and Janel McCarville and Tiffany Jackson added 12 each as the Liberty (6-13) lost their season-high fifth straight - their longest skid since a seven-game losing streak July 12-31, 2007.

"We knew how important this game was for Detroit, but they came out and outrebounded us and just killed us," Christon said.

New York has lost twice since Anne Donovan replaced Pat Coyle as head coach on Friday.

"The only thing we didn't do against Atlanta was take care of the ball - tonight we had other breakdowns that hurt us," Donovan said. "These are two teams that are used to being in the postseason, and Detroit understood that they needed to win this game tonight."

The Shock led 32-31 at halftime, but took control with a 12-5 run to start the third quarter and led 59-50 at the end of the period.

The Liberty scored the first five points of the fourth quarter, but the Shock were able to pull away down the stretch.