We’ve got you covered on the Liberty beat

Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Madeline Kenney about all things Liberty and WNBA.

LOS ANGELES — Liberty coach Sandy Brondello walked into Tuesday night’s postgame press conference after the Liberty’s 105-97 win against the Sparks sopping wet with a white towel draped around her shoulders.

Her glasses were propped up on her head to pull her drenched hair out of her face.

Brondello, the Liberty’s new all-time winningest head coach, didn’t mind the surprise shower she was met with in the cramped visiting locker room at Crypto.com Arena after capturing her 101st regular-season win as New York’s head coach.

“It means a lot,” Brondello said. “It’s a privilege to be the head coach of the New York Liberty, an original franchise [with] the best owners in the league. But it just means I’ve had a really good team for the four years I’ve been in New York and a lot of credit just goes to the team and just buying in the way that we want to play.”

The Liberty hired Brondello ahead of the 2022 season after the Mercury decided not to renew her expiring contract despite leading the team to the 2021 WNBA Finals.

The hope for the Liberty was that hiring an experienced coach such as Brondello could lead New York over the hump and win the franchise’s first championship.

Brondello — with the help of her players, of course — made good on the promise last season, her third with the Liberty as she helped deliver New York its first professional basketball title in decades.

Brondello said she hasn’t taken the time to reflect on her journey up to this franchise record.

“Don’t really get into those kind of stuff,” she said. “Obviously it’s nice, it means we’re winning But more about just trying to win this game more than any kind of records and how we continue to get better and getting ready for Vegas but like I said, it’s a privilege to be part of this organization and hopefully we can continue to win a lot more games.”

Brondello was seated between her two veteran bigs, Emma Meesseman and Jonquel Jones, who powered the Liberty to Brondello’s milestone win.

Meesseman scored a season-high 24 points and had nine rebounds and four assists.

Jones added 21 points and 11 rebounds.

Tuesday’s game was more of an offensive showcase between the two teams than a defensive clinic — not that Brondello necessarily minded.

She recognized that the Sparks are one of the best offensive teams in the league.

New York’s man-to-man coverage wasn’t going to handle Los Angeles, so the Liberty ran zone.

The Sparks still managed to exploit the Liberty’s zone in areas, but not enough to win.

“As long as we’re outscoring [them] then we’re fine,” Brondello said. “Defense worked just fine.”

Meesseman had been critical of the Liberty after their loss against the Lynx two days prior. She called out the team’s lack of attention to detail and effort amongst other things.

But Tuesday was a far better showing.

“Our approach is a little different and we paid more attention to detail so it made it easy for me to kind of read more about what’s kind of happening on the court,” Meesseman said. “And hopefully, game by game it’s going to be like that. We’re still adjusting to it felt good.”

Meanwhile, the Sparks had four players finish with 16-plus points, with Kelsey Plum leading the team with 26 points, five rebounds and five assists.

With Tuesday’s win, the Liberty remain in second place in the standings, sitting six games behind the Lynx who are the only team to have clinched a postseason berth.

But there’s only 1.5 games separating second place and fourth and three games separating fifth and ninth.

The top eight teams make the playoffs.

It’s a sprint to the finish for the Liberty, who are scheduled to play their 12 remaining regular-season games in 29 days.

New York will complete its final back-to-back of the season Wednesday in Las Vegas.