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Liberty-Monarchs Preview

Aug 6, 2009 - 8:40 PM By SANTOSH VENKATARAMAN STATS Senior Writer

New York (6-13) at Sacramento (5-16), 10:00 p.m. EDT

The Sacramento Monarchs look to sweep the season series from the New York Liberty for the second straight year when the worst teams in the WNBA meet Friday night at Arco Arena.

Sacramento (5-16) and New York (6-13) have been perennial title contenders, but both are enduring terrible seasons and have changed coaches in 2009.

Monarchs general manager John Whisenant fired Jenny Boucek on July 12 and took over as coach. Whisenant guided Sacramento to its lone championship in 2005.

The Liberty dismissed Pat Coyle last Friday, replacing her with assistant Anne Donovan on an interim basis. Donovan, in the Hall of Fame as a player, coached Seattle to a championship in 2004.

New York's season-high five-game losing streak started with an 88-73 defeat to Sacramento on June 23. Monarchs All-Star guard Nicole Powell scored a career-high 32 points on 12-of-16 shooting as Whisenant earned the first win of his second stint with the club.

Powell averaged 15.5 points in last year's two victories over New York.

Sacramento's leading scorer had a solid performance Saturday with 18 points, but her teammates didn't fare as well in a 59-56 loss to Los Angeles. The Monarchs averaged 87.3 points in winning two of three prior to the poor-shooting effort.

Other than Powell, Sacramento shot 26.7 percent (12 of 45), losing despite limiting the Sparks to 36.4 percent from the field.

"Defense isn't enough, you've got to do it on offense as well," Powell said. "You have to be sharp and be able to execute. We need to start playing the whole game."

New York fell to 0-2 under Donovan with a 76-64 defeat at Detroit on Tuesday. The Liberty had 10 turnovers after committing 25 in an 89-83 loss at Atlanta in their coach's debut last Friday, but shot 33.9 percent against the Shock.

"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."

New York center Janel McCarville averaged 18.0 points over her last three games. She scored 12 against the Shock, missing her final six shots after making her first five.

The Liberty are beginning the West Coast portion of their five-game trip and will play three games in five days. They are 1-6 against Western Conference opponents.