Kent Bewley's News Story Collection

On Sun, May 24, the Dallas Wings played in their fifth game of the 2026 WNBA regular season as they faced the New York Liberty at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. With three epic wins so far in this season entering Sunday, the Wings were already set to be on a better pace than they were last season in Paige Bueckers’ rookie season. Under new head coach Jose Fernandez, Dallas has new players such as forwards Alanna Smith and Jessica Shepherd along with guard Odyssey Sims and center Awak Kuier. But the biggest addition of them all for the Wings was their second straight number one overall pick in Azzi Fudd, who reunited with her best friend in Bueckers in Dallas after playing four seasons together at UConn and winning a national title in Apr 2025. With road wins over the Indiana Fever and Chicago Sky and one win at home over the Washington Mystics, Dallas was facing a hard test on the road against the Liberty, who were getting Sabrina Ionescu back for her regular season debut. Let’s see how this big game in the Big Apple went down.

The game started with New York getting off to an early 11-2 lead, forcing Fernandez to call an early timeout. But the Wings started creating some offense with them being down 20-17 at the end of the first quarter. In the second quarter, Bueckers made a couple of easy baskets and the player who scored a lot of points for Dallas in this period was Arike Ogunbowale, who made four three-pointers in the first half. The Liberty tried their best to keep their lead up, but they were only up by a single point at halftime. Breanna Stewart was being contained while Ionescu was also missing some shots as well. The third quarter would be huge in determining the outcome of this game.

In the beginning of the second half, the Wings finally took their first lead of the game as a couple of threes were made by Kuier and Ogunbowale. But the one player who took over in this quarter was Azzi Fudd, who made not one, not two, not three, not four, but five three-pointers in the third. An incredible output of 17 points in one period for Fudd, who scored as many points in the quarter as New York did. Dallas held a 10-point lead at the end of the quarter and they were seeking to close out the Liberty in the fourth.

The power couple of Bueckers and Fudd made a couple of threes to push the lead to 14 points and a lot of free throws were taken and made by the Wings in the quarter. Bueckers made all eight of her free throw attempts and Dallas won the game 91-76. Both of the UConn alumni on the Wings combined with Ogunbowale(a Notre Dame product) for a combined 67 points. The trio combined for 13 made three-pointers and Fudd led with six treys. Both Azzi and Paige had 24 points each as a lot of teams the crowd in the seats at Barclays Center were cheering them on. In a losing effort, the Liberty were led by Satou Sabally in scoring with 20 points while Jonquel Jones and Breanna Stewart each scored 14 points. Ionescu could only muster up 11 points in her season debut.

With this win, Dallas is now 4-3 on the season and they will play a couple of home games against the Las Vegas Aces and Seattle Storm to enter the month of June. This was a career-best performance by Fudd, whose 17-point third quarter is tied for the second most points in a single period by a rookie in WNBA history. An encore could be in hand as Fudd looks to continue doing well in her bench role for the Wings at the start of her rookie season.