Practice had ended and all of her teammates had left the court, but Tari Phillips remained.

She worked on her shot, her post moves and her footwork. The work ethic is nothing new to the Liberty center, but what is unusual is that the extra work has not been paying off.

“It’s frustrating,” said Phillips before the Liberty (5-4) hosted the Phoenix Mercury (2-9) at the Garden last night. “I feel pretty good physically – about as good as I can feel – but things just aren’t working for me right now.”

And it is having an effect.

“The way our inside players are struggling right now, it’s killing us,” said Liberty head coach Richie Adubato, as he watched Phillips run through her extra drills. “We can’t afford to keep this up.”

No team could. The Liberty have for years been notoriously small and had a hard time containing some of the league’s more powerful inside teams, but they never have had this much trouble.

During the past two seasons, Phillips made nearly half of her field goal attempts and scored almost 15 ppg over that stretch.

That production has been absent so far this season. The 6-foot-1 Phillips is shooting just 33.3 percent from the floor and is averaging just 8 ppg.

“I’m still trying to figure out what the problem is,” Phillips said. “At first, I thought it was only a slow start, but now the season is getting on and I have to find an answer.”

The only way to find that is by working harder, something Adubato isn’t concerned about.

“I know Tari comes to play all the time,” Adubato said. “But, sometimes, no matter how much time you put in, the shots still don’t fall. Sometimes it just takes a couple of baskets during a game to turn everything around. I certainly hope that’s the case here. We need her.”

Especially since new addition Elena Baranova has been almost as ineffective on offense. The 6-foot-5 Russian, who came to the Liberty after the Miami Sol folded before the season began, was expected to contribute down low.

Instead, Baranova has mirrored Phillips’ struggles and has hit just 34 percent of her shots and seen her scoring fall from 11.8 ppg to 6.

“I think both of them are trying to do too much and make up for lost time,” Adubato said. “That’s what happens when things aren’t going well for you. But you have to be patient and take things as they come. Otherwise, you’ll be doing that all year.”